Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun plural Long ropelike locks or thin braids of twisted or styled hair radiating from the scalp.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hairstyle worn by Rastafarians and others in which the hair is left to grow into long matted strings.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Caribbean English dread, follower of Rastafarianism, from dread, righteous fear of God; see dread.]

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Examples

  • In response to the derogatory history of the term dreadlocks, alternative names for the style include locks and African Locks.

    RVABlogs 2009

  • In Jamaica the term dreadlocks was first recorded in the 1950s as a term for the "Young Black Faith", an early sect of the Rastafari which began among the marginalized poor of Jamaica in the 1930s, when they ceased to copy the particular hair style of Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and began to wear dreadlocks instead. [citation needed] It was said that the wearer lived a "dread" life or a life in which he feared God, which gave birth to the modern name

    RVABlogs 2009

  • Not even dreadlocks is ever referred to as Bob Marley but braids.

    Archive 2008-06-01 2008

  • But Bob Marley got me thinking dreadlocks is really the Bob Marley hairstyle.

    The Legends 2008

  • The convergence of a great number of suck-ass film, one of which is a white guy in dreadlocks and a white male in Afro, coupled with the return of striking writers ….

    CRAP RULES CRAP-DOMINATED MARKET 2008

  • Not even dreadlocks is ever referred to as Bob Marley but braids.

    The Legends 2008

  • Organic grocers and twentysomethings in dreadlocks and sandals still coexist with Turkish kebab stands and immigrant women in headscarves pushing baby carriages.

    Archive 2007-07-01 2007

  • The producer of a radio interview we did was maddened by her insistence that her dreadlocks were a tree -- though according to Rasta cosmology, she was right.

    Vivien Goldman: Remembering Ari Up Vivien Goldman 2010

  • The producer of a radio interview we did was maddened by her insistence that her dreadlocks were a tree -- though according to Rasta cosmology, she was right.

    Vivien Goldman: Remembering Ari Up Vivien Goldman 2010

  • He wore nothing but stained and tattered rags, and his dreadlocks were a mane of raggedy hair, so he moved in the engine room in a kind of camouflage.

    The Whale Warriors Peter Heller 2007

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