Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A shoal or other obstruction in a stream-bed, perceptible through rippling or other movement at the surface.
  • noun A flaxen-haired person.
  • noun One whose hair is tousled or rumpled up like a bunch of tow.
  • noun The hooded merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus; the mosshead. G. Trumbull, 1888. See cut under merganser.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun colloq. An urchin who has soft, whitish hair.
  • noun (Zoöl.), Local, U. S. The hooded merganser.
  • noun Local, U. S. A low alluvial island or shoal in a river.

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

  • noun Alternative spelling of towhead.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person with light blond hair

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • A lot of things have gotten better in our world from the days when I was a tow-head, but not everything.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Steve Perry 2009

  • He nodded and turned his ceremonial little procession in the direction of Fort Baker, leaving me with the corporal, a diminutive tow-head by the name of Larsen.

    The Beekeeper's Apprentice King, Laurie R. 2006

  • A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2003

  • Having made a friend of the little witch of a girl, and of Buddy, who had been the baby the year before, but whose place had been usurped because of the advent of another tow-head into the family, the others of "them Trimminses," as they were spoken of in Polktown, had become

    How Janice Day Won Helen Beecher Long

  • Stone noticed this and was "riled" a little, for she had tried doubly hard to do well, just because this tow-head was in the class, and now to have the little scamp repudiate it all was too bad.

    The Evolution of Dodd William Hawley Smith

  • Then he took off his broad-brimmed hat and ran his fingers over his stubby tow-head.

    Three Soldiers John Dos Passos 1933

  • Wouldn't you think she was a canary-bird, to listen to her, and to see that Scandahoofian tow-head of hers?

    Main Street 1920

  • Wouldn't you think she was a canary-bird, to listen to her, and to see that Scandahoofian tow-head of hers?

    Main Street Sinclair Lewis 1918

  • It is a great pity that a flibbertigibbet wench with a tow-head should be the death of you.

    The Line of Love Dizain des Mariages James Branch Cabell 1918

  • At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.

    Summer; a novel 1917

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