Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A long lock or ringlet of hair.
- n. Archaic A plait or braid of hair.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A plait, braid, lock, or curl of hair; any distinct portion of the hair of the head, especially when long; in the plural, the hair of the head, especially when growing abundantly.
- To furnish with or form into tresses: chiefly in the past participle used adjectively.
- n. An obsolete form of trace.
- n. A dialectal variant of trest.
- n. A termination of some feminine nouns. See -ess .
Wiktionary
- n. A braid, knot, or curl, of hair; a ringlet.
- n. by extension A knot or festoon, as of flowers.
- v. To braid or knot hair.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A braid, knot, or curl, of hair; a ringlet.
- n. Fig.: A knot or festoon, as of flowers.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a hairdo formed by braiding or twisting the hair
Etymologies
- From Old French tresce, of uncertain origin; possibly from Vulgar Latin *trichia < Ancient Greek. Compare French tresse, Italian treccia. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English tresse, from Old French, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *trichia, tricia, rope, braid, from Greek trikhiā, rope, from thrix, trikh-, hair. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Details include pleats, tucks and beads to sheer layers in tulle, chiffon and it a season of the "tress" - a cross between a dress and a tunic, and it epitomizes the lightness of spring.”
“Rock goads guys in a barbershop into talking about the limbs they'd likely lose if they ever tried to touch their girlfriends 'hair, and encourages women to comb through all sorts of what you might call "tress" - ful intimacy issues - when to take a shower together, the awkwardness of what one of them calls "weave sex," and so on.”
“Saugen moved, lifting to a sitting position on his mis'tress's chest.”
“Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic.”
“Over by the tress are a bunch of bugs, so it's not really fun when you get to inhale them. ”
“Instead of getting all vexed, Scooby and Shaggy-style, they should have thanked his blonde temp ... tress (Ali Larter doing a bargain basement impression of Sharon Stone at her most bargain basement) for adding some excitement to their lives.”
“But apparently my son is a martyr, for he would rather be tortured tress-less, pinched peau*-less, than give in to a couple of raging and aging opponents.”
“Wood is free if you own all the forests and have enslaved all the labor required to process to turn tress into something more functional.”
“On the one hand, it seems such a downright, dirty, party foul to squelch out the natural and splendid sounds of nature -- the babbling brook, the wind through the tress, the chirping birds, etc. -- in favor of electronic audio.”
“The look popped up at Prabal Gurung (glossed-over pony tails were clipped mid-mane); Cynthia Rowley (big metallic versions made modern chignons) and Carolina Herrera, where tress guru Orlando Pita created fanciful clips out of human hair.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tress’.
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-ess
words with the suffix -ess
goddess, giantess, enchantress, doctress, archeress, auditress, avengeress, buildress, butleress, captainess, cateress, championess and 106 more...
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LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...yearling, wild celery, Wain, Themis, talon, slither, sedge, sea eagle, scurf, rile, prevaricate, poplar tree and 732 more...
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Keyboard Hopscotch
You may start on any key. You may repeat a character, or travel to an adjacent key on the keyboard. On my qwerty keyboard, I may follow s with w, e, d, x, z, a, or (repeating) s. (If you use az...
assert, weeds, trews, treed, sewer, sewed, seeds, sawer, sawed, reeds, erred, asses and 65 more...
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gyre - enquired & unquired
Early in the fall, I watched several hundred eagles riding gyres - higher and higher - as they caught a lift on their migration South. An enquire and unquire of gyre appears called for.
Argyre, argyre planitia, gyreful, Gyrfalcon, gyrencephala, curl, curlicue, gyral, whorl, jabberwocky, gyre, frizzle and 21 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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hairstyles
bun, bobtail, ponytail, cornrow, odango*, updo, bouffant, plait, braid, bunches, buzzcut, combover and 331 more...
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random
words I read but don't know
nascent, proxy, desultory, charlatan, churlish, emaciated, gaudy, shill, lurid, frisson, marauding, plunder and 610 more...
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flannagan's Words
netop, kenspeckle, loden, framboise, providence, milquetoast, schism, cadence, thrush, asphodel, clandestine, aesthete and 196 more...
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Turning and Twisting Tours
words in the nature of double spirals
swift, swerve, swirl, swivel, swarm, swag, swank, swoop, swinge, swarf, spire, esparto and 361 more...
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Give Me a Head With Hair
blonde, brunette, ginger, titian, redhead, follicle, afro, mullet, dandruff, pomade, bouffant, dreadlocks and 16 more...
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Light and Shade
apotheosis, rote, whet, enisle, delve, lissome, clamour, latent, virgule, saboteur, covenants, curb and 49 more...
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The Bad
simper, kiss, prawn, boil, globule, mince, entrepreneur, tress, discombobulate, smarmy, undulate, paunch and 4 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tress.
vanishedone Courtesy of Vexamples: Over by the tress are a bunch of bugs, so it's not really fun when you get to inhale them. Nov 17, 2009