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Origin and history of wooly

wooly(adj.)

also woolly, 1570s, "consisting of, resembling, or made of wool," from wool (n.) + -y (2).

The meaning "barbarous, rude" is by 1891, from American English wild and wooly, a phrase from the frontier, by 1878 a regular feature in journalistic accounts of the big talk of the Old West, probably suggestive of animal savagery:

"I am a wolf from Bitter Creek, the further up you go, the worse they get, and I'm from the headwaters! Whoppee! Wild and wooly and full of fleas, and never was curried above my knees! Wake, snakes, and come at me! I'm a tarantula from Del Norte, a snapping turtle of the valley, and I eat men and animals!" ["Gold Hill Daily News," Nevada, Dec. 12, 1879]

quoted from St. Louis, shows the usual full form of it. Related: Wooliness. Wooly-haired is by 1791. The woolly bear caterpillar is so called by 1845, American English.

also from 1570s

Entries linking to wooly

wool(n.)

Middle English wol, from Old English wull "wool, fine soft hair which forms the coat of sheep and lambs," from Proto-Germanic *wulno (source also of Old Norse ull, Old Frisian wolle, Middle Dutch wolle, Dutch wol, Old High German wolla, German wolle, Gothic wulla), from PIE *wele- (1) "wool" (source also of Sanskrit urna; Avestan varena; Greek lenos "wool;" Latin lana "wool," vellus "fleece;" Old Church Slavonic vluna, Russian vulna, Lithuanian vilna "wool;" Middle Irish olann, Welsh gwlan "wool").

Historically the most important material for clothing in cold and temperate lands. Extended to the hair of certain other animals. In reference to short, crisp, curly or kinky hair on the heads of some persons, by 1690s.

The figurative expression pull the wool over (someone's) eyes "deceive, delude, prevent from seeing clearly," is recorded from 1838, American English.

To be literally dyed in the wool (1725, as opposed to dyed in the piece) is to be so before spinning, while the material is in its raw state, which has a more durable effect; hence the figurative meaning "from the beginning; most thoroughly," is attested from 1809, used especially in U.S. politics from 1830.

-y(2)

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.