ppl. a. [UN-1 8, or f. prec.]
1. Of hair: Not formed into, or growing in, curls or ringlets; out of curl.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., IV. vii. 40. His faire lockes … He let to grow and griesly to concrew, Vncomb’d, vncurl’d, and carelesly vnshed.
1611. L. Barry, Ram Alley, II. i. Thy head, Which is with greasy hair orespred, And being vncurld and black as cole [etc.].
1693. Congreve, in Dryden’s Juvenal, XI. (1697), 291. Two home-bred Youths … With honest Faces, tho’ with uncurl’d Hair.
1712–4. Pope, Rape Lock, V. 26. Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to gray.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 72. Their black hair, long and uncurled.
1828. Scott, Tapestr. Chamb., ¶ 25. His hair … was dishevelled, uncurled, void of powder, and dank with dew.
1848. Lytton, Harold, I. i. His forehead shaded with short thick hair, uncurled, but black … as the wings of a raven.
b. Not adorned with curls or ringlets.
1799. in Spirit Pub. Jrnls., III. 322. Leave me uncurl’d, undinner’d, here to mourn.
2. Not disposed in coils or spiral convolutions; also, relaxed from a spiral form.
1597. Middleton, Wisd. Solomon, iii. 1. The adder is not always seen uncurl’d.
1708. Pope, Ode St. Cecilia’s Day, iv. The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl’d hang list’ning round their heads.
1820. Keats, Hyperion, II. 46. A serpent’s plashy neck; its barbed tongue Squeez’d from the gorge, and all its uncurl’d length Dead.
1841. T. R. Jones, Anim. Kingd., 259. When not in use, the proboscis is coiled up…; but when uncurled, its structure is readily examined.
