(stress variable), a. Having a woolly head: a. in specific names of plants; b. Woolly-haired; c. fig. Dull-witted.
a. 1650. [W. Howe], Phytol. Brit., 22. Carduus eriocephalus … Wolly-headed Thistle.
1796. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), III. 701. Carduus eriophorus … Woolly-headed Thistle.
1857. Anne Pratt, Flower. Pl., III. 237. Cnicus eriophorus … (Woolly-headed Plume-thistle).
1889. J. H. Maiden, Usef. Pl. Australia, 72. Andropogon bombycinus.… ‘Woolly-headed Grass.’
b. 1708. Brit. Apollo, No. 5. 2/1. The Blacks in Guinea are Woolly-headed.
1813. Prichard, Phys. Hist. Man, vi. § 6. 307. Most of them resembled the woolly-headed Papuas.
1877. Miss A. B. Edwards, Up Nile, xvi. 435. Abyssinians and Nubians,… flat-nosed, and wooly-headed.
c. 1883. Miss Broughton, Belinda, IV. iv. She has taken … the Borrowdale road, walks along it for some distance confused and woolly-headed.
1883. Phil Robinson, in Harper’s Mag., Oct., 708/2. This [water divining], too, not by silly, woolly-headed people, but by practical, hard-headed men of business.
