frowzled and frowzly and frowzy and frowziness

I ran across frowzled in a late 19th century description of Mark Twain. When he was touring with GW Cable in late 1884, just before the publication of Huckleberry Finn, he was described by a Boston newspaper as follows:

"Mr. Clemens, who has not been seen on the platform in eight years, received a warm welcome as his frowzled head appeared from the ante-room."

This appearance of the frowzled sent me scurrying (or is it scampering? or scooting?) to the dictionary and Internet to find other example of this term. The OED attests it as early as 1808: "[His] enthusiasm caught fire & made him...rub his frouzled Crop till every hair stood erect." The definition of the term it gives is "rumpled, tousled, dishevelled, frowzy." A later example is from 1872: "Both these Frauleins had short frowsly hair." And, from Harper's Magazine in 1901, we have: "Look at the poor thing's hair! Only see how frowsly it is." Though the definition would allow for frowzled clothes or a frowzled appearance, the only examples refer to hair. So, we had three possible spellings of the term by 1900: frowzled, frouzled, and frowsly (the OED also lists frowzly but gives no examples).

But the usage is primarily a 19th century one, as can be seen by two Internet quotations. An 1853 short story, by Sara Willis Parton, describes a person's ears: "large as a pair of five-year-old's cupped hands, jutted almost perpendicularly from her white frowzled hair..." Or, from Mable Eaton's 1898 Orpheus and Eurydice--Revised: "loose jointed hands and feet, frowzled hair.." That there was no standardized spelling of the term must have driven dictionary editors crazy. The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (11th edition) "solves" the problem by not having the word. But it seems like it is a term almost meant for Twain: frowzled hair and rumpled clothes. Indeed, maybe frowzled is a combination word, of tousled and frizzy. No one says so, but possibilities abound. I really like the fact that the word is attested both as frowzled and frowsly/frowzly; it means that we can make the words up as we go along.

Frowsy

What a difference an "l" makes. Or, you can say that there is an "l" of a difference between frowsy and frowsly! The older definition of frowsy, but not by much, is "ill-smelling, fusty, musty; having a 'close' unpleasant smell from being dirty, unwashed, ill-ventilated." The earliest attestation is from 1681: "An overgrown Deputy of the Ward, tho a frouzy Fellmonger."*

[*A Fellmonger is "a dealer in skins or hides of animals, esp. sheep-skins." The noun "fell" goes back at least to Beowulf and means "the skin or hide of an animal."]

Or, more elegantly, from Dryden in 1700: "With Frowzy Pores, that taint the ambient Air." And then, in a too-good-to-miss quotation from 1802: "Is pinching frowzy wenches in their bed Fit sport for spirits?" Dickens used the term in this way in Nicholas Nickelby: "By the steams of moist acts of Parliament and frowzy petitions."

Frowzy's second definition is almost identical to frowzly. The OED has it: "having a dirty, untidy, soiled, neglected appearance (like e.g., unkempt hair); dingy, rusty, slatternly." Relating to the complexion it means "red and coarse, blowzy." Note the rhyming words which are beginning to pile up: musty, fusty, rusty, blowzy. How about crusty? dusty? The variety of quotations from 1710 to 1895 illustrate the range of frowzy's meaning. When Dickens says, "Hair...hanging in a frowzy fringe about his forehead," he is referring to an unkempt fringe of hair. But when Jonathan Swift says: "A frowzy dirty-colour'd red Sits on her cloudy wrinkled face," he is probably using it to mean "coarse or blowzy," though that is not certain. I actually like the figurative use of the term by Byron: "A drowzy frowzy poem, call'd the 'Excursion,' Writ in a manner which is my aversion."

I'll end with two quotations which use the noun form of the word, frowziness. Mandeville, in his Fable of the Bees, speaks of "The Frowsiness of the Place, and the ill Scents of different kinds are a perpetual Nuisance." In this quotation we can imagine the word signifying all manner of "unkemptness" of a place. Then we have a scintillating quotation from 1835: "That species of high conventual frowziness which monastic habits and garments are not a little apt to engender." This quotation is so vivid we can almost smell the musty, dusty, dirty, fusty monastery--a monastery which is given that odor by the garments of the inhabitants. It is a sort of "high conventual (i.e., relating to a Convent) frowziness."

Conclusion

The OED suggests that frowzy might be cognate with frowsty and also frowze. I can see that we have to keep caressing these words to discover the full linguistic contours of the the sound "frow..."

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