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hirsute

UK/həːˈsjuːt/US/hɚˈsut/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,933 of 15,258neutral

Hirsute means very hairy. A hirsute chest, distinctly hirsute, hirsute forearms.

It is a formal and slightly comic word, used in writing where hairy would do in speech. In botany it is a precise term for a surface covered with coarse stiff hairs. The Latin hirsutus means shaggy.

Definitions of hirsute

  1. 1adjectivehirsuteVery hairy.C2

    “The actor was so hirsute that the make-up team had to shave his back for the beach scene.”

hirsute is a quality of hairiness.

Where it comes from

Latin hirsutus means shaggy or bristly. Horrid comes from a related root about bristling.

  1. Latin

    hirsūtus — shaggy, hairy

  2. English, today

    hirsute

From Latin hirsūtus (“shaggy, hairy”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

hirsute in the wild

  • The Handlebar Club humorously describes the style as "a hirsute appendage of the upper lip and with graspable extremities".

    Handlebar moustache

  • The flowering stems are slender, often arcuate, hirsute.

    Oreomecon dahliana

  • Rubus hirsutus, the hirsute raspberry, is a species of flowering plant in the family Rosaceae, native to southern China, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan.

    Rubus hirsutus

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.