Haircut

How to spell haircut

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce haircut

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does haircut mean?

1. nounAn act of cutting someone's hair, or the resulting style.
2. nounA reduction applied to the stated value of an asset or to the amount a creditor is repaid.

Haircut in a sentence

• He booked a haircut before the wedding.

• Bondholders accepted a fifty percent haircut on their investment.

• A decent haircut at that salon costs forty pounds.

• The bank applies a haircut to the collateral when calculating the loan.

Where does haircut come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a plain English compound, formed simply by joining two very old words. The first element, 'hair', descends from the Old English 'hær', a native Germanic word for the thread-like growth on the body and head, with close cousins across the Germanic languages such as the German 'Haar'. The second element, 'cut', appears in Middle English around the 1200s and means to sever or shorten with a blade; its own deeper origin is uncertain, possibly from a Scandinavian source. The two words were yoked together as a noun meaning 'a cutting of the hair' only in the nineteenth century, comparatively late for such a homely idea. In the twentieth century financiers borrowed the term for a forced reduction in the stated value of an asset, picturing the loss as a bit trimmed off the top, much as a barber trims hair.

How the word is built

• hair (Old English hær, the strands growing on the head)
• cut (to sever or trim)