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wild-and-woolly†

DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.

adj.

characterized by uncouth, untamed behavior.

The term woolly has been variously accounted for. One view is that many pioneers wore sheepskin coats with the wool out, thus earning the epithet; another is offered in the 1910 quote below.

Quotations

1900

The . . . wolfer . . . was . . . about as rough and tough a customer as one could have hoped not to meet anywhere in the wildest and wooliest parts of the west.

1903

Breaking the wild and woolly bronco is thrilling, and he needs no other tonic. . . .

1910

[The Padre contends that the West is called "woolly" because of our storms, and urges, in defence of his opinion, that in Alaska the winds are called "woollies."]

1914

Nearly fifty years ago a young Presbyterian minister, James Robertson, born 1839, swore that, God helping him, he would never allow the Canadian Prairie to become a "wild and woolly West."

1958

While the colony on Vancouver Island was law-abiding, the miners . . . were a wild and wooly bunch of extroverts.