Other forms: goatees
A goatee is a small beard on the chin alone. Grow a goatee, trim the goatee, a neat goatee.
Strictly it is chin only and the version with a moustache attached is a Van Dyke, though almost nobody keeps the distinction. It is named after the tuft of hair on a goat's chin, which is exactly what it looks like.
1noungoateeA small beard on the chin alone.
“He shaved off his beard but kept a neat little goatee.”
goatee is facial hair.
Goat plus -ee, from the tuft of hair on the chin of a domestic goat.
Middle English
goot
English
goat
English, today
goatee
From goat + -ee. From goat + ee, referring to the tuft of hair on the chin of many domestic goats. goat comes from Middle English goot. Middle English goot, got, gat, from Old English gāt, from Proto-West Germanic gait, from Proto-Germanic gaits, from a qfa-sub language. The sense of lecherous man derives from the slang expression "horny as a goat".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA