[f. prec. sb. or ad. F. tonsurer (14–15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.) or med.L. tonsūrāre (845 in Du Cange).] trans. To clip or shave the hair of; to confer the ecclesiastical tonsure upon.
1793. Minstrel, I. 90. I must tonsure those fine tresses to the due form.
1843. Carlyle, Past & Pr., II. xiv. Now tonsured into a mournful penitent Monk.
1872. O. Shipley, Gloss. Eccl. Terms, 459. The Greeks tonsured their whole heads, like St. James and the other Apostles.
1878. Maclear, Celts, viii. (1879), 123. They … were tonsured from ear to ear,—that is, the fore part of the head was made bare, and the hair was allowed to grow only on the back part of the head.
b. fig. To make bald-headed.
1876. W. B. Scott, Sonn., 9. And now that age hath shriven and tonsured me.
Hence Tonsuring vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1811. Henry & Isabella, I. 3. He manifested a sufficient genius at the tonsuring business.
1906. Reader, 24 Nov., 123/2. He … gladly followed her advice to remedy with a curled scalp the ‘tonsuring action of middle age.’
