Pigtail

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This article is about the hair style. For the connectors, see patch cable.

"Pigails" redirects here. For other uses, see bunches.

A woman with two pigtails

A pigtail is another name for hair styled into a large braid that extends down or out from the head. In analogy to the ponytail hairstyle and the long, free-flowing tail of a horse, a pigtail is named for the visual resemblance of a thick, irregularly-tensioned hair braid to the kinked tail of a pig. A person's hairstyle may consist of one or more individual pigtails.

In some regional usages of English, pigtails are considered synonymous with a symmetric pair of bunches, regardless of whether each "bunch" is braided or left loose.

[edit] Word origin

Bedouin woman with pigtails, 1880s.

The term pigtail appears in English in the American colonies in the 1600s to describe a twist of chewing tobacco. One of the steps in processing the tobacco was to twist a handful of leaves together to form a compact bunch that would then be cured (dried, either with or without smoking). The term "pigtail" was applied to the bunch based on its resemblance to a twisted pig's tail.

From the later 1600s through the 1800s, the term came to be applied to any braided (plaited, in British parlance) hairstyle. The British army also adopted a single pigtail or "queue" as its standard dress for long hair.

Robert Louis Stevenson mentions "pigtail" referring to hair and then to "pigtail tobacco" in the first and fourth chapters of Treasure Island, respectively.[1]

The term pigtail in British English does not convey a childish connotation. To the contrary, even to this day British barristers wear a wig with pigtails as a sign of their position and wisdom. In American English however, the childish connotation is evident.