toupee
/ˈtuːpeɪ
/noun
A small artificial hairpiece worn to cover a bald spot.On the run from France for assorted crimes, he attaches himself, gargoyle-like, to the hotel as a year-round resident, and sets up shop in the town making hair adornments - from toupees to merkins to funeral jewellery....
- Gruesome and downright unhygienic as the use of such objects now seems, it may be surmised that in the twenty-first century it will be thought equally unpleasant that the best wigs and toupees of the 1960s were made of human hair.
- He tore through the number and, toward the end, shook his long, slicked-back blond hair until it fell forward, like a toupee attached at the brow line, virtually covering his face.
Origin
Early 18th century (denoting a curl or lock of artificial hair): alteration of French toupet 'hair tuft', diminutive of Old French toup 'tuft', ultimately of Germanic origin and related to top1.
A toupee was initially a curl or a lock of artificial hair; it is an alteration of French toupet ‘hair-tuft’, a diminutive of Old French toup ‘tuft’, distantly related to top.