Perm

How to spell perm

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce perm

What does perm mean?

1. nounA hairstyle of long-lasting curls or waves created by chemically treating the hair.
2. verbTo set long-lasting curls or waves into hair using a chemical treatment.

Perm in a sentence

• noun

  Her tight perm took two hours at the salon.

• verb

  She decided to perm her straight hair before the wedding.

• noun

  The photo from the 1980s shows him with a frizzy perm.

• verb

  The salon will perm your hair for a small fee.

Where does perm come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Perm is a twentieth-century clipping of permanent wave, the name given to a chemical hairdressing treatment that set curls or waves into hair so they would last for months. The longer word permanent traces back to the Latin permanens, the present participle of permanere, which literally meant 'to stay through' or 'to remain to the end', combining per ('through, thoroughly') with manere ('to stay or abide'). The hairdressing sense arose around 1909, when heat-and-chemical methods could make a wave outlast a single wash, hence calling it permanent. The snappy short form perm became common from the 1920s and 1930s as the treatment spread through salons. Because it is a clipping, the spelling simply lops off the first syllable of permanent, which is why it ends abruptly in the same -erm sound found in 'term' and 'germ'.

How the word is built

• clipped form of permanent: per- (through, thoroughly)
• man (from manere, to stay)
• -ent (adjective ending)