shockhead

English

Alternative forms

• shock-head

Etymology

From shock +‎ head.

Noun

shockhead (plural shockheads)

1. A head of long, unkempt, rough hair.
   • 1858, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Natural Method of Mental Philosophy:

     She carries it so carelessly, it seems like the profusion of hair on the shockheads of all the village boys, and village dogs: it grows like grass.

   • 1872, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish Sketch-book, volume 2, page 160:

     Parents are at the cabin doors, dressing the hair of ragged children; shock-heads of girls peer out from the black circumference of smoke, and children inconceivably filthy, yell wildly and vociferously as the coach passes by.

2. A person having hair of this kind.

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary