Sunday Word: Dundrearies
dundrearies [duhn-dreer-eez]
noun:
long whiskers or side-burns on the side of the face when present without a beard
(click to enlarge)
Examples:
Berkman is a longtime student of photography and its history, and Weschler quotes him saying he has a pattern 'of uncovering things, trying to popularize them, and nobody really caring.' He sports the long muttonchops known as dundrearies, and lives in Pasadena in a cluttered studio. (Michelle Chihara, Pillows of Air: A Conversation with Lawrence Weschler, Los Angeles Review of Books, October 2023)
How easy it was for Grandfather to support the role of heavy Victorian paterfamilias when armed with that awful hirsute shrubbery known as dundrearies. (Kay Veness, Whiskers in History, The Australian woman's mirror, August 1949)
His hair and eyebrows were thick and red, too red, and his round chubby face was flanked by a pair of silky, luxuriant red dundrearies that would have done credit to a day of hirsute achievements. (Henry Russell Miller, The House of Toys)
I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. (James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake)
On Wednesday morning, at seven o’clock, a neatly dressed man, wearing a pair of very respectable dundrearies, made his appearance at the Memorial Hospital, in Latimer. (Nicholas Carter, A Cigarette Clew; Or, 'Salted' For a Million)
Origin:
There’s nothing dreary about dundrearies (behold their straggly yet luxurious magnificence!), nor about the word dundrearies, named after Lord Dundreary, a character in the 1858 play 'Our American Cousin' as portrayed with wackiness (and wacky whiskers) by English actor Edward A Sothern. What is dreary is the fact that 'Our American Cousin' was the play President Abraham Lincoln was attending when he was assassinated seven years later. (Merriam-Webster)