A toupee is a small hairpiece worn to cover baldness. Wear a toupee, an obvious toupee, the toupee slipped.
It covers a patch rather than the whole head, which is what separates it from a wig. The word is faintly comic in English, and hairpiece is the neutral term. The French toupet means a tuft of hair, which is exactly what it is.
1nountoupeeA small hairpiece worn to cover baldness.
“The wind blew his toupee off, and everyone could see he was bald.”
toupee is a hairpiece.
French toupet means a small tuft of hair or forelock, a diminutive of Old French top, a tuft. Top and tuft are relatives.
Proto-Germanic
*tuppaz — summit, crest, tuft of hair
Frankish
*topp — summit, crest, tuft of hair
Old French
toupet — small tuft of hair, forelock
Middle French
toupet — small tuft of hair, forelock
French
toupet — small tuft of hair, forelock
English, today
toupee
Built from
1727, from French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), from Middle French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), from Old French toupet (“small tuft of hair, forelock”), diminutive of toupe, top (“tuft of hair”), from Frankish topp (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), from Proto-Germanic tuppaz (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”). Cognate with Old Dutch topp (“top”) (Dutch top), Old Frisian top (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), Old English top (“summit, crest, tuft of hair”), Old High German zopf (“end, summit, tuft of hair”), Old Norse toppr (“tuft of hair, forelock”). More at top.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Hair & Grooming