haired

1. 1
   adjectivein compounds

   Having hair of a specified type, length, or color, as marked by an accompanying descriptive word.

   A red-haired stranger sat alone at the end of the bar.

   The breed is prized for its silky, long-haired coat.

   Note

   The compound-forming use belongs to portraiture: Jane Austen's sandy-haired Colonel Wallis in Persuasion, Dickens's crisp-haired Mr Brogley in Dombey and Son. Here haired never stands alone. The word before it carries the description, and the pair is hyphenated into a single adjective. That sets it apart from the plain "having hair" sense, which tells you that hair is present rather than what it looks like.

2. 2
   adjective

   Covered with one's own hair, grown and still attached, rather than bald or hairless.

   A newborn kitten is only lightly haired, and its pink skin shows through in places.

   The female's tail is noticeably more haired than the male's.

   Similarfurred, hairy, furry

   Oppositehairless, bald

   Note

   Mostly a describer's word, at home in natural history: a mammal's ear haired on its back and bare beneath, Robert Ruark's setter haired almost as thinly as a pointer. Unlike many adjectives shaped like participles, it grades freely (more haired, thinly haired), so it can measure how much hair as well as whether there is any. It goes back to Middle English hered, hair plus -ed, a formation shared by Dutch behaard and German behaart.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of hair.

   The tanner haired the hides before sending them to the tanning pits.

   The bow maker haired the new violin bow with pale horsehair.

   Note

   A regular past form, haired does duty as both simple past and participle, and it inherits a verb that points in opposite directions. A tanner who haired hides took the hair off. A luthier who haired a bow put horsehair on. A bald patch that haired over grew its own back. Only the object, or the lack of one, tells you whether hair was removed, supplied or grown.

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