blondeblondadj.n.

Etymology: < French blond, blonde yellow-haired, ‘a colour midway between golden and light chestnut’ (Littré), = Spanish blondo, Italian biondo < medieval Latin blondus, blundus yellow (explained in a passage quoted by Du Cange ‘flavus qui vulgo dicitur blondus’). Origin uncertain: see Diez and Littré. In English used by Caxton (in form blounde); reintroduced from modern French in 17th cent., and still sometimes treated as French, as to be written without final e when applied to a man, especially substantively, a blonde; in North America commonly written blond like the French masculine, but in Britain the form blonde is now preferred in all senses.Compare Old English blanden-feax , blonden-feax having mixed or grizzly hair, grey-haired, old; also beblonden , given in Bosworth as ‘dyed’, both fromblondan to mix, bland v.¹ Hence Du Cange, s.v. Blundus, conjectures the original sense to be ‘dyed’, the ancient Germans being accustomed to dye the hair yellow.