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.).
1592. J. LYLY, Mydas, iii. 2. How, sir, will you be trimd? 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?
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?
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.
1594. BARNFIELD, The Affectionate Shepherd.
Why should thy sweete LOVE-LOCKE hang dangling downe, | |
Kissing thy girdle-stud with falling pride? |
1600. SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 1 Watch. And one Deformed is one of them: I know him, he wears a LOCK.
1615. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, Cupids Revenge, ii. He lay in gloves all night, and this morning I brought him a new periwig with a LOCK at it.
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.
1640. SHIRLEY, The Coronation, i.
And who knows but he | |
May lose his Ribband by it in his LOCK, | |
Dear as his Saint? |
1649. DAVENANT, Love and Honour, ii. 1.
A LOCK for the left side, so rarely hung | |
With ribbanding of sundry colours. |
1663. BUTLER, Hudibras, I. i. 253.
Like Samsons HEART-BREAKERS it grew | |
In time to make a nation rue. |
1821. Blackwoods Magazine, x. 267. Pretty little fantastic chignons and LOVE-LOCKS.
1836. M. SCOTT, Tom Cringles 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.
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-ropei.e., a rope to pull the belles after them.