Blond & blonde

Blond & blonde (pronounced blond)

(1) Of hair, light-colored (with descriptive variations, strawberry, platinum, golden, dirty, ash, sandy, honey, flaxen et al).

(2) Of a person having light-colored hair.

(3) Of timbers or veneers used for decorative purposes, light in tone.

(4) Silk lace, originally unbleached but now often dyed any of various colors but especially white or black.

1475–1485: From the Old French & Middle French blund & blont (blond, light brown, feminine of blond) thought most likely of Germanic origin and related to the Late Latin blundus (yellow) from which Italian picked up biondo and Spanish gained blondo.  It was akin to the Old English blondenfeax (gray-haired), derived from the Classical Latin flāvus (yellow) and in Old English, there was also blandan (to mix).  There exists an alternative etymology which connects the Frankish blund (a mixed color between golden and light-brown) to the Proto-Germanic blundaz (blond), the Germanic forms derived from the primitive Indo-European bhlnd (to become turbid, see badly, go blind) & blend (blond, red-haired)).  If so, it would be cognate with the Sanskrit bradhná (ruddy, pale red, yellowish).   

In his dictionary (1863-1873), Émile Littré (1801–1881) noted the original sense of the French word was "a color midway between golden and light chestnut" which might account for the notion of "mixed."  In the Old English beblonden meant "dyed," so it is a possible root of blonde and the documentary record does confirm ancient Teutonic warriors were noted for dying their hair.  However the work of the earlier French lexicographer, Charles du Fresne (1610-1688), claimed that blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flāvus (yellow) but cited no sources.  Another guess, and one discounted universally by German etymologists, is that it represents a Vulgar Latin albundus from the Classical Latin alba (white).  The word came into English from Old French where it had masculine and feminine forms and the English noun imported both, thus a blond is a fair-haired male, a blonde a fair-haired female and even if no longer a formal rule in English, it’s an observed convention.  As an adjective, blonde is now the more common spelling and can be applied to both sexes, a use once prevalent in the US although most sources note the modern practice is to refer to women as blonde and men as fair.  Even decades ago, style guides on both sides of the Atlantic maintained, to avoid offence, it was better to avoid using blond(e) as a stand-alone noun-descriptor of women.

There is also blond timber.  Usually, inanimate objects are treated as male so it’s correct to refer to light-toned timber furniture as blond but this is a convention of English use.  So, when Starbucks uses the feminine form for its blonde roast coffee, it’s not incorrect because those conventions don’t apply to commerce, indeed marketing and advertising sometimes depends for its effect on breaking the formal rules of English.

Brunette & redhead "protest", staged to publicize the premier of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, staring Jane Russell & Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood, 1953.

The lure of blondness has been noted for millennia.  In antiquity, a trade existed to supply the wig-makers of Athens and Rome with blonde hair imported from northern Germanic lands, Pliny the Elder (circa 24-79) mentioning that fashionable ladies who liked to glisten as well as shine, would have gold dust sprinkled on their borrowed locks, a technique actually borrowed from sculptors who would adorn the tresses of statues.  The blonde seems as eternal as the city.

Such is the interest in all things blonde, a hoax "scientific study" circulated between 2002-2006.  It erroneously claimed the existence of a WHO (World Health Organization) report, written by (unnamed) German researchers, concluding blond hair would be extinct by 2202, mentioning even the last blonde soul would be born in Finland.  Shocked, reputable news organizations rushed to publication without verifying the story, thus, before the term became fashionable, creating fake news, neither the WHO nor anyone else having written such a paper.  The report's greatest impact was on brunettes, some of whom expressed regret it would take that long for the competition to die off.

The blonde-extinction claim actually had a history in scientific literature dating back the publication in the 1860s of the work of biologist Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), an Augustinian abbot and founder of the science of genes, the discrete inheritable units of life.  The blonde scandal, like most false predictions in the field, was based on brute-force extrapolation and a misunderstanding of recessiveness in genetics.  Gene occurrence in populations tends generally towards stability unless the forces of natural selection confer some advantage in their extinction.  That applies especially in large population clusters (such as northern Europe and Scandinavia) where a critical mass is sustained; even rare genes will persist over generations.  It matters not whether genes are dominant or recessive, the causative agents of disappearance are a population falling below critical mass or the mechanism of natural selection.

Variations on a theme of blonde: Lindsay Lohan.