Touse

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To dishevel or make untidy, especially hair or fur
2. To roughen up or tousle something, resulting in a messy appearance
3. To create disorder in a person's hairstyle, often giving it a carefree or playful look

Etymology: "Touse" is a verb meaning to tangle or disorder hair, and its history runs back to an Old English word meaning to pull or tear. The ancestor, reconstructed as "tūsian", had a sense of pulling at something roughly, and the same root gave Middle English "tousen" and "tusen", which carried that rough-handling idea into the Middle Ages. The closest living relative is German "zausen", meaning to tousle, which keeps the same picture of hair being pulled into disarray. English "tease" and the older "toase" belong to the same family, and they show how a single action of pulling and dragging could split into different everyday words over centuries: one for combing out knots, and one for the sort of mischief that ruffles someone up.