tou·sle

(tou′zəl, -səl)

tr.v. tou·sled, tou·sling, tou·sles

To disarrange or rumple; dishevel.

A disheveled mass, as of hair.

[Early Modern English , frequentative of touse, to pull roughly, from Middle English -tousen (attested in past participles be-toused and to-toused, disheveled, rumpled); akin to German zausen and Low German tūsen, to tousle, ultimately from Germanic *tūs-; perhaps akin to Latin dūmus, thornbush, bramble (from Old Latin dusmus); and Old Irish dos, bushy tree, copse, thicket.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

tousled

(ˈtaʊzəld)

adj

tangled, ruffled, or disarranged

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

tousled - in disarray; extremely disorderly; "her clothing was disheveled"; "powder-smeared and frowzled"; "a rumpled unmade bed"; "a bed with tousled sheets"; "his brown hair was tousled, thick, and curly"- Al Spiers

disheveled, dishevelled, frowzled, rumpled

untidy - not neat and tidy; "careless and untidy in her personal habits"; "an untidy living room"; "untidy and casual about money"

tousled

adjective dishevelled, disordered, tangled, ruffled, messed up, rumpled, disarranged, disarrayed a woman with tousled hair, faded jeans and a baggy jacket

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

tousled

[ˈtaʊzld] ADJ [appearance, style] → desaliñado, desarreglado; [hair] → despeinado

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

tousled

[ˈtaʊz^əld] adj [hair] → ébouriffé(e)

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

tousled

adj hair → zerzaust, wuschelig (inf); tousled head → Wuschelkopf m (inf)

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

tousled

[ˈtaʊzld] adj (hair) → arruffato/a; (bedclothes) → sottosopra inv

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

And then at last, just as my watch pointed to 6.50 (how well I remember the exact moment!) Rosalind awoke suddenly, as women and children do, sitting straight up on the instant, and putting up her hands to her tousled hair, with a half-startled "Where am I?" When her hair was once more "respectable," she gave her skirts a shake, bent sideways to pull up her stockings and tighten her garters, looked at her watch, and then with an exclamation at the lateness of the hour, went over, with an air of desperate determination, to her bicycle.

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His hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling, moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead.

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"Yes," she answered, looking gravely at his tousled hair and blinking gray eyes.

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Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads.

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The taller and more elegant man was still in his night-garb, with tousled black hair, and now crawling about the garden on his hands and knees, still looking for traces of the burglar; and now and again, to all appearance, striking the ground with his hand in anger at not finding him.

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Denisov was a small man with a red face, sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair.

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She saw the shock of black hair tousled upon Tarzan's well-shaped head disappear in a spurt of flame.

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An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest sleep, appeared with a card upon a tray.

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Then, as if reproach- ing himself for the longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two tousled heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened his Plato.

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He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a bit of the sky.

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That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him.

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Henry Allegre, if any man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was a chit of a girl, I was sitting with a book where I had no business to be, in his own garden, when he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl of seventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an old black frock and shabby boots.

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