Opera and singing

The twelfth entry is a peruca, and English once carried the same word at its full length. It came in from the French perruque and was written « periwig », a form that survives only in old books and in the costume department. What happened next is what English does to a long word it has to say every day: it bit the front off and kept « a wig ». The short form then behaved like a native word rather than a borrowing, and grew a family — « to wear a wig », « a wigmaker », « a bewigged judge » — and above all it produced a noun that has left the dressing room altogether. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the size of a man’s wig announced his standing, with judges and bishops wearing the largest, and « a bigwig » still means a person of importance, said with a faint smile. Portuguese keeps a peruca whole and keeps it literal, so nothing of that kind grew on it. Where the word came from before it reached French is not settled, and both languages stop at the same border.