or lock, subs. (old).—A falling curl by the ear: fashionable more or less from the time of Elizabeth to Charles I.; worn on the left side, and hanging by the shoulder, sometimes even to the girdle. Also HEART-BREAKERS (q.v.).

1

  1592.  J. LYLY, Mydas, iii. 2. How, sir, will you be trim’d? Will you have your beard like a spade, or a bodkin?… your LOVE-LOCKES wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggie to fall on your shoulders?

2

  1592.  GREENE, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, D2, b. Will you be Frenchified, with a LOVE-LOCK down to your shoulders, wherein you may hang your mistres’ favour?

3

  1592.  NASHE, Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell [GROSART (1885), ii. 28]. Yet cannot his stabbing dagger, or his nittie LOUE-LOCKE, keepe him out of the Legend of fantasticall cockscombs.

4

  1594.  BARNFIELD, The Affectionate Shepherd.

        Why should thy sweete LOVE-LOCKE hang dangling downe,
  Kissing thy girdle-stud with falling pride?

5

  1600.  SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 1 Watch. And one Deformed is one of them: I know him, he wears a LOCK.

6

  1615.  BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, Cupid’s Revenge, ii. He lay in gloves all night, and this morning I brought him a new periwig with a LOCK at it.

7

  1633.  PRYNNE, Histrio-mastix, 209. And more especially in long, unshorne, womanish, frizled, love-provoking haire, and LOVELOCKES, growne now too much in fashion with comly pages, youthes, and lewd, effeminate, ruffianly persons.

8

  1640.  SHIRLEY, The Coronation, i.

                    And who knows but he
May lose his Ribband by it in his LOCK,
Dear as his Saint?

9

  1649.  DAVENANT, Love and Honour, ii. 1.

        A LOCK for the left side, so rarely hung
With ribbanding of sundry colours.

10

  1663.  BUTLER, Hudibras, I. i. 253.

        Like Samson’s HEART-BREAKERS it grew
In time to make a nation rue.

11

  1821.  Blackwood’s Magazine, x. 267. Pretty little fantastic chignons and LOVE-LOCKS.

12

  1836.  M. SCOTT, Tom Cringle’s Log, ii. The outlandishness of the fashion was not offensive, when I came to take into the account the beauty of the plaiting, and of the long raven LOVE-LOCKS that hung down behind each of his small transparent ears.

13

  1868.  BREWER, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, s.v. LOVE LOCK. When men indulge in a curl in front of their ears, the LOVE-LOCK is called a bell-rope—i.e., a rope to pull the belles after them.

14