Snood

Sometimes you come across a word that you know the meaning of, only to find your meaning doesn't fit the context. So when I read in 'Good Evening, Mrs Craven' that all the girls wore their hair in snoods, I thought, strange!


A snood, I knew, was the flap of skin that wobbles about over the beak of certain bird species, most noticeably the turkey.


I couldn't see girls wrapping their hair in those, even in wartime, so I checked and discovered a snood, in those days, was an ornamental net in the shape of a bag that confined a woman's hair.


Nowadays, it seems, the snood has had a makeover and in the most common modern form it resembles a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head. The band covers the forehead or crown of the head, goes behind the ears and under the nape of the neck.


Just to complete our examination of the word snood it is also a puzzle video game created in 1996 by David M. Dobson.