Pastel on cardboard painting of a tow-headed boy, wearing a black coat with gold buttons and seated on a chair.
27 June 2022
The adjective tow-headed usually refers to someone, especially a child, with light-colored or tousled hair. Tow, in this context, means flax or fiber used for spinning and ropemaking. Tow is typically a light brown or blond, hence its use to refer to that color of hair. The phrase is commonly reanalyzed and misspelled as toe-headed because the root tow is seldom used nowadays.
Tow can be traced to the Old English *tow, found in compounds like towcræft (weaving-skill), towhus (weaving-house), and towlic (related to weaving). The Old English word is likely related to the Old Norse to, also meaning unworked fiber.
While the root is found in Old English compounds, it does not appear as a standalone word in the extant Old English corpus. The standalone word isn’t recorded until the mid fourteenth century, when it appears in the Accounts of the Clerk of the King’s Ships for 1358–59. It appears as an English word, one of two, in a Latin record:
Et in CCC.lb. de towe, vjxx, fassibus straminis. xiij.Mill. de wyuelyng emptis per predictum tempus pro factura et reparacione nauium et batellorum Regis predictarum—vj.li.x.s.ij.d. sicut continetur ibidem. Que quidem towe stramen et wyueling computat expendisse super factura. Que quidem towe, stramen, et wyuelyng computat expendisse super factura et reparacione earundem nauium et batellorum per tempus predictum sicut continetur ibidem.
(And about 300 lbs. of tow, 6 score[?] bundles of straw, 13 thousand of weveling [caulking material] bought at the aforesaid time for the construction and repair of the previously mentioned ships and equipment of the king. that are being maintained in that place —6.pounds.10.shillings.2.pence. And indeed, the tow, straw, and weveling are reckoned in the expense for the above construction and repair of the same ships and equipment during the aforesaid time that are being maintained in that place.)
The use of tow-head to refer to a person, however, doesn’t appear until the early nineteenth century and appears to be an Americanism. The word appears in Noah Bisbee’s 1808 play The History of the Falcos and refers to a stupid person, an early example of the stereotype of a ditzy blonde:
But I do not believe yet, as contemptible as I think him, that he is such a tow-head, that he can be twice deceived in one day, by the same persons.
And tow-headed, describing children, appears in the Connecticut Mirror of 4 January 1819:
And a funny time they have of it, I dare say; for while the farmers among them are snoring away, draming of their wives and little tow-headed spalpeens at home, the jantilmen and the rakes are tripping their feet in the buoyant dance with their wives and sweethearts.
Spalpeen is Irish English for a boy, a rascal, or a laborer. Here the meaning is that of a child.
And there is the following from the Salem Gazette of 6 September 1825. The story was reprinted in multiple newspapers of the day and seems to have originated in the New York Commercial Advertiser, although I have not found the relevant issue of that paper:
One of the company accosted him, and inquired how the sheep could feed where the stones were so thick? “Why we sharpen their noses, how do you think?” replied the lad. Another said, “My boy, your corn looks very yellow.” “Why you damned fool, we planted yellow corn!” replied the tow-headed urchin, who was evidently something of a wag.
Sources:
Bisbee, Noah. The History of the Falcos. Walpole, New Hampshire: Observatory Press, 1808, 3.2. ProQuest.
Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, with supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921, s.v. tow-cræft, n., tow-hus, n., tow-lic, adj.
“The Carrier of the Connecticut Mirror to his Patrons, January 1, 1819.” Connecticut Mirror (Hartford), 4 January 1819, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“From the N.Y. Commercial Advertiser: Letter From a Traveller in New England.” Salem Gazette (Massachusetts), 6 September 1825, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. tou, n.(1).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989. s.v. tow, n.1.
Sandahl, Bertil. Middle English Sea Terms, Vol. 1. The Ship’s Hull. Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature 8. Upsala: A.-B. Lundequistka, 1951, 177.
Image credit: Olga Boznańska, before 1940. Public domain image.