havelock

[prettygoodword]

havelock (HAV-lok) - n., an attachment for a cap that covers and protects the back of the neck and ears from the sun.


Including an improvised handkerchief over the neck held in place with the cap. Living in a desert, I see these a lot (and have a cap that used to have a snap-on one, long since detached and lost) but didn't have a better word for it than "neck-flap." Now I know. This is an Americanism that first appeared in 1861, supposedly named after Sir Henry Havelock (1795-1857), an English general in India, which ... doesn't quite make sense.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

huh, that last sentence is useful, because Havelok is also quite an old name. For example.

[prettygoodword]

It is indeed a very old name, but how it came to be applied, in America first, to this article is ... obscure, and a British general in India doesn’t seem to fit.