toupee

• toupe, toupée, toupet

1727, from French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), from Middle French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), from Old French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), diminutive of toupe, top (“tuft of hair”), from Frankish *topp (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), from Proto-Germanic *tuppaz (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”). Cognate with Old Dutch topp (“top”) (Dutch top), Old Frisian top (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), Old English top (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), Old High German zopf (“end, summit, tuft of hair”), Old Norse toppr (“tuft of hair, forelock”). More at top.

• IPA^(key): /tuːˈpeɪ/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -eɪ

toupee (plural toupees)

1. A wig of false hair worn to cover a bald spot, especially as worn by a man.

   Synonym: hairpiece

2. (obsolete) A small tuft; a curl or artificial lock of hair.
3. (obsolete) A small wig, or a toppiece of a wig, worn by both sexes.
   • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss:

     Her powdered hair is turned backward over a toupee.

• “toupee”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.