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wig

Today it means: A head of real or synthetic hair worn on the head to disguise baldness, for cultural or religious reasons, for fashion, or by actors to help them better resemble the character they are portraying. Full definition →

French perruque

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The story

French · derived fromperruque
English todaywig

Clipping of periwig, itself an alteration of French perruque. The meaning of "to reprimand" perhaps came from this being something a bigwig would do or perhaps from the expressions to flip one's wig, wigs on the green, or dash my wig!

Words from the same roots

Frenchperruque all →

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.