elflock

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English

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Etymology

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From elf +‎ lock.

Noun

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elflock (plural elflocks)

  1. (now rare) A lock of hair that is tangled.
    • 1828, Mary Russell Mitford, “The Fisherman in his Married State”, in Our Village[1], 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

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References

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