elflock

English

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Etymology

From elf +‎ lock.

Noun

elflock (plural elflocks)

1. (now rare) A lock of hair that is tangled.
   • 1699, [Antoine de Brunel], A Journey Into Spain, London: R. Wellington, page 68:

     [T]heir wide Farthingales extreamly fill the Coach, an one would take their thick and knotty Elflocks for Hempen ſtuffing, broke out of an old pack-ſaddle.

   • 1828, Mary Russell Mitford, “The Fisherman in his Married State”, in Our Village‎, London: G.B. Whittaker, page 278:

     Never was even washerwoman more untidy. A cap all rags, from which the hair came straggling in elf-locks over a face which generally looked red-hot […]

   • 1904, Stanley J. Weyman, “XII. The Peasants' Camp”, in The Abbess of Vlaye:

     All went unshaven, and many had long, filthy elf-locks hanging about their faces, and ragged beards reaching to their girdles.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     The face which emerged was not reassuring. […]. He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.

Translations

lock of hair that is tangled

Chinese: Mandarin: 糾結的頭髮 / 纠结的头发 (jiūjié de tóufa) Finnish: takku (fi) German: Weichselzopf (de) m Polish: kołtun (pl) Spanish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: ко́втун (uk) m (kóvtun)

References

• Random House Dictionary, 2nd Edition. Unabridged, 1987.