Also 5 tonsur, -our. [a. F. tonsure (14th c. in Godef.), or ad. L. tonsūra a shearing or clipping, f. tondēre, tons-um: see TONSE.]
1. gen. The action or process of clipping the hair or shaving the head; the state of being shorn.
1390. Gower, Conf., III. 291. For unlust of that aventure Ther was noman which tok tonsure.
1616. Bullokar, Eng. Expos., Tonsure, a clipping or cutting of the haire.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., li. 56. We … reduce our Tonsure to a just moderation and decency.
1770. Langhorne, Plutarch (1851), I. 3/1. This kind of tonsure, on his account was called Theseis.
1876. C. M. Davies, Unorth. Lond. 183. The ‘county crop’—that species of tonsure which all had undergone.
2. spec. The shaving of the head or part of it as a religious practice or rite, esp. as a preparation to entering the priesthood or a monastic order.
In the Eastern Ch. the whole head is shaven (tonsure of St. Paul); in the Roman Ch. either a circular patch on the crown, as in secular priests, or the whole upper part of the head so as to leave only a fringe or circle of hair, as in some monastic orders and friars (t. of St. Peter); in the ancient Celtic Ch. the tonsure consisted in shaving the head in front of a line drawn from ear to ear’ (t. of St. John). A form of tonsure was also practised by the priests of Isis.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VI. 167. He took tonsure and habit of clerk, þe ȝere of his age foure and twenty.
c. 1450. St. Cuthbert (Surtees), 1366. And gaf him tonsour and habite.
1530. Palsgr., 183. Les ordres … benet the first tonsure.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., II. ii. 96. No mention herein of settling the Tonsure of Priests, according to the Roman Rite.
1753. Challoner, Cath. Chr. Instr., 153. The Clerical Tonsure … is not properly an Order, but only a Preparation for Orders. The Bishop cuts off the Extremities of their Hair, to signify their renouncing the World and its Vanities; and he invests them with a Surplice, and so receives them into the Clergy.
1829. J. Donovan, trans. Catech. Counc. Trent, II. vii. § 14. In tonsure the hair of the head is cut in form of a crown, and should always be worn in that form, enlarging the crown as one advances in orders.
1842. Hook, Ch. Dict., 558. A clerical tonsure was made necessary about the 5th or 6th century.
1846. Sharpe, Hist. Egypt, xiv. 431. In Rome he was very partial to the Egyptian superstitions, and he had adopted the tonsure, and had his head shaven like a priest of Isis.
1849. Rock, Ch. of Fathers, I. I. ii. 186. Of the ecclesiastical tonsure … the Roman form was perfectly round; the Irish was made by cutting away the hair from the upper part of the forehead in the figure of a half-moon, with the convex side before.
b. The part of a priest’s or monk’s head left bare by shaving the hair.
[1351–2. Rolls of Parlt., II. 244/2. Gentz de Religion portantz tonsure.]
1430–40. Lydg., Bochas, IX. xiv. (MS. Bodl. 263), lf. 418/2. As a prest she [Joan] had a brod tonsure.
a. 1625. Sir H. Finch, Law (1636), 65. But if he shew cause which our law alloweth not (as because hee hath not his tonsure, or ornamentum Clericale, &c.) he shall pay a fine, and yet be driuen to take the felon.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ., Monk, Calais, i. The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure,… might be about seventy.
1849. G. P. R. James, Woodman, xiii. You must cover the tonsure with this peasant’s bonnet.
† 3. The clipping (a) of coin; (b) of shrubs or hedges. Obs. rare.
1621. Bolton, Stat. Irel., 12 (Act 25 Hen. VI.). Ireland is greatly impoverished … by the … carriage … into England of the silver plate, broken silver Bullion and wedges of silver made of the great Tonsure of the money.
1691. in Archæologia (1796), XII. 185. His yew hedges with trees of the same … kept in pretty shapes with tonsure. Ibid., 186. A fair gravel walk betwixt two yew hedges with rounds and spires of the same, all under smooth tonsure.
4. attrib. and Comb., as tonsure-cap, knife, tonsure-plate (see quot.).
1889. Pall Mall G., 23 July, 2/1. His rank … distinguished by the scarlet sash which he wears … and by his tonsure-cap, which is of the same colour.
1891. Cent. Dict., Tonsure-plate, a round thin plate slightly convex so as to fit the top of the head, used to mark the line of the tonsure according to the Roman rite.
1897. Mme. Blavatsky, Secr. Doctr., III. Why has truth to hide like a tortoise within its shell? Because it is now found to have become like the Lama’s tonsure knife, a weapon too dangerous to use even for the Lanoo. [Note. The ‘tonsure knife’ is made of meteoric iron, and is used for the purpose of cutting off the ‘vow-lock,’ or hair from the novice’s head during his first ordination.
