Snood

Snood (pronounced snood)

(1) A headband once worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

(2) A headband for the hair.

(3) A pouch or net-like hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

(4) In zoology, a long fleshy appendage of pendulous red skin that hangs over the upper beak of male turkeys.

(5) A short line of horsehair, gut, monofilament etc, by which a fishhook is attached to a longer (and usually heavier) line; a snell.

(6) A piece of clothing to keep the neck warm; a neck-warmer.

(7) To bind or confine (the hair) with a snood or (in other contexts) to put on a snood.

Pre 900: From the Middle English snod (fillet, ribbon (the plural was snoden)), from the Old English snōd (headdress, fillet, ribbon for the hair), from the Proto-Germanic snōdō (rope, string), from the primitive Indo-European snohtéh (yarn, thread), from sneh & snehi- (to twist, wind, weave, plait).  It was cognate with the Scots snuid (snood) and the Swedish snod & snodd (twist, twine) and related in various ways to the Old Saxon snōva (necklace), the Old Norse snúa (to turn, twist) & snúðr (a twist, twirl), the Old Irish snathe (thread) and the English needle.  The alternative spellings were snod & sneed, both now obsolete.  In Dutch, snood means “villanous and criminal.  The Dutch form was from the Middle Dutch snôde, from the Old Dutch snōthi, from the Proto-Germanic snauþuz (bald, naked, poor), from the primitive Indo-European ksnéw-tu-s, from the root ksnew- (to scrape, sharpen) and cognates included the German schnöde and the Old Norse snauðr.  Snood is a noun & verb and snooding & snooded are verbs; the noun plural is snoods.

In the Medieval period, snoods were most associated with young unmarried girls, the implication being “in a state of maidenhood or virginity” so were something like advertising one’s status on Facebook as “single”.  Merely adorning one’s hair with a snood was of course no guarantee of chastity so the system was open to abuse but social media profiles can be misleading so in a thousand or more years little seems to have changed.  Modern adaptations of the word have been opportunistic.  Since 1938 snood has been used to describe the pouch or net-like “bags” use to contain hear at the back of the scalp and these were well-documented as widely worn in the Middle Ages but nobody seems to have thought them snoods which were culturally specific.  The accessories dating from the late 1930s were sold in parallel with conventional hairnets and were worn almost exclusively by women, long hair for men not then a thing in the West.  Typically, they were a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head but differed from a hairnet proper in that the fit was looser, and they were constructed with a noticeably thicker yarn, weaved in a coarser mesh.  The way they were worn varied greatly according to the preference of the user and the nature of the hair to be contained.  Sometimes, a tighter-mesh band around the forehead or crown, running over or behind the ears and under the nape of the neck held things in place, the woven “bag” containing the hair dangling at the back.  There were also snoods fashioned from a solid fabric, but the advertising of the era suggests these were for fashion rather than function and tended to be colored to match an outfit.  Snood-like constructions are also worn by some women in a variety of religions which demand some form of hair-covering although the interpretation varies.  In the post-war years as health regulations began more rigorously to be imposed in food production and other sensitive facilities, snood seems briefly seems to have been used to describe the hairnets which were being mandated for employees and others in the space.  There were “hair snoods” and “beard snoods” but it was a brief linguistic phenomenon and soon it was hairnets all the way down.

Samir Nasri (b 1987) in football snood.

In Association football (soccer), the word was for some years used to describe the specialized garments players used as “neck-warmers”.  Popular with some players and understandably so in a sport played in the depths of the northern winter, the team managers were divided on their desirability and there were reports that as recently as 2009, (male) media commentators (presumably from a nice warm commentary position) were recorded as saying snoods as neck-warmers were “unmanly”.  Use of such as word would now probably see a commentator cancelled (or worse) and if may be that if a player chose again to wear one on grounds of the ubiquitous H&S (health & safety), they might find officialdom too timid to react. 

Nike Football Snood.

Demand clearly exists because manufacturers continue to maintain the product lines despite bans on their use at the professional level, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and the Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA, the International Association Football Federation) acting in 2011.  The concern apparently was on grounds of player safety, the suspicion that injuries might result from a snood being pulled from behind and in those circumstances the awarding a penalty for the infringement would not be sufficient because the need was to avoid injuries, not simply punish transgressors.  However, there was no empirical data and the risks were all theoretical so both authorities outlawed the things on the technical basis of them being “not an approved part of the football kit”.  The football snoods aren’t actually exclusively “neck-warmers” because, fully unfolded, they actually can cover the nose and ears, both vulnerable areas in cold conditions and in competitions where they’re not banned, they’re popular with goalkeepers, usually the most static position on the pitch.  So, instead of being thought of as neck-warmers, they’re really half-balaclavas and in the US, where “football” is something different, they’re often called “soccer scarfs”.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates the difference in a muffler (designed for warmth, left) and a scarf (designed to be decorative, centre).  A football player is a fully extended football snoot, worn in extended, half-balaclava style (right); in the US these are sometimes called “soccer scarfs”.

There is a logic to that although “soccer muffler” might be more precise although, lacking the alliterative punch, it’s unlikely to catch on.  Until well into the twentieth century, muffler and scarf were used interchangeably but with the introduction of the baffled mechanical device used to reduce the noise from car engines, the automotive use swamped the linguistic space and muffler became less associated with the neck accessory.  Historically, muffler was mostly British in use, Americans always preferring scarf but scarf is now almost universal although in the upper reaches of the fashion business however, the distinction is sometimes still drawn between the two, a scarf defined as an accessory to enhance the look and made from fabrics like silk, cotton or linen whereas a muffler is more utilitarian, bulkier and intended to protect from the cold and thus made from wool, mohair or something good at retaining body-heat.  Confusingly, muffler occasionally is used in commerce as a label of something which looks like a small blanket, worn over the shoulders and resembling an open poncho.