dundrearies
Oct. 24th, 2012 07:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodworddundrearies (duhn-DREER-eez) - n., long, flowing (or bushy) sideburns.
Named after the character Lord Dundreary as played by Edward A. Sothern in the 1858 play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. Such whiskers (also called Piccadilly weepers) were fashionable from around 1840 to 1870, after which this name for them also passed out of use. The name lasted somewhat longer as a term for kind of phrasal malapropism the character did, such as "birds of a feather gather no moss," but it too has passed from our stage, leaving the play to survive in American consciousness as the one Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.
---L.
Named after the character Lord Dundreary as played by Edward A. Sothern in the 1858 play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. Such whiskers (also called Piccadilly weepers) were fashionable from around 1840 to 1870, after which this name for them also passed out of use. The name lasted somewhat longer as a term for kind of phrasal malapropism the character did, such as "birds of a feather gather no moss," but it too has passed from our stage, leaving the play to survive in American consciousness as the one Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.
---L.
