[hair-ee] Pronunciation Key | 1. | covered with hair; having much hair. |
| 2. | consisting of or resembling hair: moss of a hairy texture. |
| 3. | Informal.
|
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
| hair·y
(hâr'ē) Pronunciation Key
adj. hair·i·er, hair·i·est
hair'i·ness n. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
| hairy | |
adjective | |
| 1. | having or covered with hair; "Jacob was a hairy man"; "a hairy caterpillar" [ant: hairless] |
| 2. | hazardous and frightening; "hairy moments in the mountains" |
hairy hair·y (hâr'ē)
adj. hair·i·er, hair·i·est
- Covered with hair or hairlike projections.
- Consisting of or resembling hair.
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
hairy
1. Annoyingly complicated. "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
2. Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See also hirsute.
The adjective "long-haired" is well-attested to have been in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was equivalent to modern "hairy" and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun "long-hair" was at the time used to describe a hairy person. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish "hairy" as a sort of stunted mutant relic.
4.
[The Jargon File]
(2001-03-29)
hairy
adj.1. Annoyingly complicated. "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
2. Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See also hirsute.
A well-known result in topology called the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem states that any continuous transformation of a 2-sphere into itself has at least one fixed point. Mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term `hairy' with the informal version of this theorem; "You can't comb a hairy ball smooth."
The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying sense
3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.
Hairy
Hair"y\, a. Bearing or covered with hair; made of or resembling hair; rough with hair; rough with hair; rough with hair; hirsute. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. --Milton.
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