The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (36 page)

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Authors: David Grambs

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woman’s coiffure with bangs and the unlayered hair at chin length
Buster Brown, cap cut
woman’s coiffure in which the combed-down hair is curled outward
flip
woman’s coiffure that is short in which the hair arcs over the forehead and
forms a triangle at the back
wedge, Dorothy Hamill
woman’s coiffure in which the short and uneven-length curls are given
featherlike ends
feather cut
woman’s coiffure that is close-cropped in layers and short in the back
shingle
woman’s coiffure in which the hair is combed or swept up toward the top
of the head and held by pins or combs
upsweep, updo
woman’s coiffure with a braid or braids “woven” close to the head and
attached with pins
French braid
 
 
She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under the chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË,
Jane Eyre
 
 
Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven-and-thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese; she had a somewhat large face, the under-jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; ...
CHARLOTTE BRONTË,
Jane Eyre
 
woman’s coiffure in which the hair is combed back to form a long or
vertical roll at the back of the head
French twist, French roll
woman’s coiffure (eighteenth century) with the hair worn in cylindrical
rolls or puffs
pouf
 
artificial covering of (another’s or synthetic) hair
hairpiece, wig
man’s covering of hair over a bald spot
toupee, piece, rug
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century man’s wig often powdered and
gathered at the back
periwig, peruke
woman’s fringe of hair or curls worn on the forehead
frisette (archaic)
 
having a mustache
mustached, mustachioed (usually a long mustache)
mustache that is slight and thin
pencil mustache
narrow mustache under the middle of the nose
toothbrush mustache
thickly shaggy or droopy mustache
walrus mustache
thick mustache with long and curving ends
handlebar mustache, military mustache
curving and dressed mustache
waxed mustache
 
having a beard
bearded
beard covering most of the lower face
full beard, beaver
small chin beard or tuft
goatee
 
 
The lower part of his physiognomy was over-developed; his narrow and low forehead, unintelligently furrowed by horizontal wrinkles, surmounted wildly hirsute cheeks and a flat nose with wide, baboon-like nostrils.
JOSEPH CONRAD,
Victory
 
 
Her hair was very elaborately done with two ringlets on the left side of her scraggy neck; her dress was of silk, and she had come on duty for the afternoon.
JOSEPH CONRAD,
Victory
 
 
He was a muscular, short man with eyes that gleamed and blinked, a harsh voice, and a round, toneless, pock-marked face ornamented by a thin, dishevelled moustache sticking out quaintly under the tip of a rigid nose.
JOSEPH CONRAD,
Victory
 
 
She was a small, plump, fair woman, with a bright, clear eye, and an extraordinary air of neatness and briskness.
HENRY JAMES,
Washington Square
 
 
Her shape was not only exact but extremely delicate, and the nice proportion of her arms promised the truest symmetry in her limbs. Her hair, which was black, was so luxuriant that is reached her middle before she cut it to comply with the modern fashion, and it was not curled so gracefully in her neck that few would believe it to be her own.
HENRY FIELDING,
Tom Jones
 
beard that is long and rectangular
patrician, square-cut beard
trim and pointed beard extending back to the ears
Vandyke, pickedevant
beard shaped like a pointed or broad spade
spade beard
pointed beard beginning at the lower lip
imperial
beard following the line of the chin
galways
 
whiskers extending below the ears
sideburns, burnsides, side-whiskers, sideboards
side-whiskers that become broader at the lower jaw
muttonchops, muttonchop whiskers, dundrearies
 
 
COLORS OF HAIR
 
white
hoary, silvery, platinum, snow white
blond
blonde, blondish, straw-colored, flaxen-haired
golden blond
goldilocks
bleached blond
peroxide blond, bottled blond, drugstore blond
pale grayish blond
ash blond
black or brown
brunette, dark-haired, dark
black
raven, jet, jet black, coal black, ebony
brown
chestnut, wheaten, nut brown
 
 
His manners, she thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron-grey hair and his deep eye sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type represented by Sir James Chettam.
GEORGE ELIOT,
Middlemarch
 
 
The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea could see a pair of grey eyes rather near together, a delicate irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backward; and there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect than belonged to the type of the grandmother’s miniature.
GEORGE ELIOT,
Middlemarch
 
 
William Dampier ... had written his famous account.... “Their eyelids are always half-closed to keep the flies out of their eyes ... They had great bottle noses, pretty full lips, and wide mouths.”
ALAN MOOREHEAD,
The Fatal Impact
 
 
The girls were sisters. One wore a green frock, the other a tunic of mauve jersey with an orange sash around her bottom. Their cheeks were rouged, their hair shingled, and their nostrils were cavernous.
BRUCE CHATWIN,
On the Black Hill
 
 
She was a short and very courageous woman with laugh wrinkles at the edge of her slaty eyes, and silver hair cut in a fringe.
BRUCE CHATWIN,
On the Black Hill
 
drab brown
mouse-colored, mousy
reddish brown
auburn
red-haired
redheaded, a carrot top, ginger, gingery, titian
reddish blond
strawberry blond
gray or partly gray
grizzled, graying, hoary
dyed reddish or orangish brown
hennaed
 
dyed slightly bluish (to offset yellowed coloration)
having a blue rinse
 
 
She despised Nigel for lacing his plummy voice with working-class slang.
BRUCE CHATWIN,
On the Black Hill
 
 
Chile was still in the chair when the new-wave barbers came back and began to comment, telling him they could perm what was left or give him a moderate spike, shave the sides, laser stripes were popular.
ELMORE LEONARD,
Get Shorty
 
 
The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance: a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat.
HENRY JAMES,
Daisy Miller
 
 
He plucked a flower and stuck it in his buttonhole, and something a little doggish peeped out of the black buttony eyes, a hint of the seraglio.
GRAHAM GREENE,
Brighton Rock
 
 
There was a deep humility in Hale; his pride was only in his profession: he disliked himself before the glass, the bony legs and the pigeon breast, and he dressed shabbily and carelessly as a sign—a sign that he didn’t expect any woman to be interested.
GRAHAM GREENE,
Brighton Rock
 
 
And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown velvet cap that made his head as round as a chestnut, with the brown velvet flaps loose and wild over his ears, and a wisp of elf-like, thin black hair blowing above his full, elf-like dark eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin crinkling up into odd grimaces on his small-featured face, he looked an odd little boy-man, a bat.
D. H. LAWRENCE,
Women in Love
Eyes
 
having large eyes
large-eyed, saucer-eyed, wide-eyed, fish-eyed
having small eyes
beady-eyed, piglike, ferret-like, ferrety
 
having the eyes wide apart
wide set, far set
having the eyes close together
close set
 
having sunken eyes
hollow-eyed, deep set
having bulging or protruding eyes
pop-eyed, banjo-eyed, prominent, protuberant, starting,
exophthalmic, hyperthyroid, bug-eyed, proptosed, bulbous,
goggle-eyed
having narrow eyes
slit-eyed
 
having lively eyes
bright-eyed, twinkle-eyed, flashing, luminous, beaming,
glinting, glowing
having expressionless eyes
flat, cold, dull-eyed, lusterless, blank, fish-like, glassy
 
blinking frequently
blinky-eyed, blinky
 
 
Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main.
HERMAN MELVILLE,
Moby-Dick
 
 
His face was pale as death, and far more ghastly; the broad forehead was contracted in his agony so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line; his eyes were red and wild, and the foam hung white upon his quivering lip.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
“My Kinsman, Major Molineux”
 
 
He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough, and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see, but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age, with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. CHARLES DICKENS,
Oliver Twist
 
 
He placed himself at a corner of the doorway for her to pass him into the house, and doated [
sic
] on her cheek, her ear, and the softly dusky nape of her neck, where this way and that the little lighter-coloured irreclaimable curls running truant from the comb and the knot—curls, half-curls, root-curls, vine-ringlets, wedding-rings, fledgeling [
sic
] feathers, tufts of down, blown wisps—waved or fell, waxed over or up or involutedly, or strayed, loose and downward, in the form of small silken paws, hardly any of them much thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger than long round locks of gold to trick the heart.

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