A Yorkism designed for those bad hair days
I was having a bad hair-bad clothes-bad makeup-whatever day last week, and in desperation, I turned to my affable my husband and said, “I don’t look too strubbly today, do I?”
I was shocked that he knew what I meant; he said I looked fine (he’s a smart man!) But then I started thinking about this Yorkism, which I know both Dianne and Melanie have mentioned before.
To be strubbly, especially with regard to your hair for some reason, means to be disheveled, basically. It’s fairly widely used; it even appears in a quiz in the Dictionary of American Regional English! But I have no idea what its origins are, and I have no idea why it is most often used to refer to your hair in particular.
Any ideas?
