About the pigtail/ponytail thing from the previous entry

[telophase]

Go answer my poll in the previous entry before reading this. :)



Alas, at work we do not have a subscription to the Dictionary of American Regional English* but we do have a subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary so I can see what the OED makes of the pigtail/ponytail dichotomy.

* Technically we do, but it's in print and it's one of those multi-volume monstrosities with additional volumes issued as it updates which makes it difficult to look stuff up in and I am too lazy to go downstairs and do that.

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Pigtail

a. A plait or tail of hair.

In early use: a single plait or queue of hair hanging down from the back of the head, as in a particular style of wig, or as worn by soldiers and sailors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; a long plait of hair as formerly worn by the Chinese. Now chiefly: each of two tails of (usually plaited) hair hanging from either side of the head, as worn esp. by young girls (cf. ponytail n.).

?1725 At the Blue Peruke in Red-Lion-street (T. Barker, Peruke-maker) (single sheet) (advt.) His Prices are Two Shillings and Six Pence for each Bob..and Three Shillings a Pig-Tail.

a1774 A. Tucker Light of Nature (1777) iv. xxxv. 254 The French carpenter cannot saw his boards, without a long pig-tail and ruffled shirt.

1839 Dickens Nicholas Nickleby xiv. 122 [Mrs. Kenwigs' girls] had flaxen hair tied with blue ribands hanging in luxuriant pigtails down their backs.

1874 Lady Herbert tr. J. A. von Hübner Ramble round World I. 280 Chinamen..with their black caps, equally black pig-tails..and their black felt shoes.

1892 ‘A. M.’ From Austral. & Japan 226 He..wiped his grizzled moustache and twisted its extremities into pig-tails.

1922 E. von Arnim Enchanted April (1989) 45 Carlyle had scowled at her; Matthew Arnold had held her on his knee; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on the length of her pig-tail.

1958 Life 19 May 91 She has been so vividly remembered for her freckles, pigtails, tilted nose, wistful eyes and gaminlike cuteness that everybody still imagines her that way.

1991 Hair's How No. 34. 808/2 Divide the ponytail in two, then plait to form two pigtails.

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Ponytail

ponytail, n.

A hairstyle in which the hair is gathered and fastened at the back of the head so that it hangs down like a pony's tail; a bunch of hair gathered in this way. Cf. horse-tail n. 1c.

[1873 Trollope Eustace Diamonds II. xxxiv. 100 ‘How a man can like to kiss a face with a dirty horse's tail all whizzling about it.’.. ‘I haven't even a pony's tail,’ said Lucy.]

1916 C. L. Carlsen Taming of Calinga xiii. 110 One caressing bite of the bolo had severed the strange, withered head with the Pony Tail.

1948 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 15 July 52/8 If your hair is straight, don’t fret... Sweep it back in a ‘pony tail’ to keep your neck cool.

1950 Portland (Oregon) Press Herald 25 Sept. 12/8 Pony tail... The young fry are wearing pony-tail coiffures, too, you know.

1975 New Yorker 28 Apr. 31/2 She, too, had her hair in a ponytail, held by a rubber band.

1990 Daily Tel. 28 Apr. (Colour Suppl.) 6 (caption) She [sc. the Duchess of York] has made a feature of her pony-tail by using it to wear flags and ribbons on visits abroad.

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So it does seem that in British usage at the time the 'pigtail' entry was compiled, it tended to mean braided, although it could mean either. That might be where I got it, given that I had a steady stream of British children's literature growing up.

In other news, it does occur to me that while I've heard of men having ponytails, I've never heard of men having pigtails. Whether it's because male hairstyles don't do the two-tailed thing or because 'pigtail' is coded female, I don't know.

edit: Rereading the pigtail entry, I'm betting that early pigtail styles were curled, hence the name, and then the word got attached to any tail of hair.

Comments

[genarti]

I was trying to think if I'd heard of men having pigtails, and concluded yes... for period pieces, where somebody has a braided queue of some sort, especially if it's stiff enough to turn up at the end. (It does come across as slightly dismissive/insulting to me, though. Like, whether you're talking about a 19th century Chinese man or a sailor or whatever else, you'd call it a queue to be neutral, or a pigtail if you want to be a bit dismissive, for comic effect or racism or flippancy or whatever. Not sure if that's accurate to usage at the time or just my perception now.)

[sartorias]

yeah, me too: the pigtails on men were always braided, sometimes treated with pitch or oils of some sort. I never saw loose hair referred to that way. Those were always queues, often clubbed (tied up double so the ends didn't draggle)

[golden_bastet]

But I thought the Chinese... er, braid was a queue?

Oy, this languaging thing is all over the place.