▪ I. tonsure, n.
(ˈtɒnsjʊə(r))
Also 5 tonsur, -our.
[a. F. tonsure (14th c. in Godef.), or ad. L. tonsūra a shearing or clipping, f. tondēre, tons-um: see tonse.]
1. gen. The action or process of clipping the hair or shaving the head; the state of being shorn.
| 1390 Gower Conf. III. 291 For unlust of that aventure Ther was noman which tok tonsure. 1616 Bullokar Eng. Expos., Tonsure, a clipping or cutting of the haire. 1650 Bulwer Anthropomet. ii. 56 We..reduce our Tonsure to a just moderation and decency. 1770 Langhorne Plutarch (1851) I. 3/1 This kind of tonsure, on his account was called Theseis. 1876 C. M. Davies Unorth. Lond. 183 The ‘county crop’—that species of tonsure which all had undergone. |
2. spec. The shaving of the head or part of it as a religious practice or rite, esp. as a preparation to entering the priesthood or a monastic order.
In the Eastern Ch. the whole head is shaven (tonsure of St. Paul); in the Roman Ch. either a circular patch on the crown, as in secular priests, or the whole upper part of the head so as to leave only a fringe or circle of hair, as in some monastic orders and friars (t. of St. Peter); in the ancient Celtic Ch. the tonsure ‘consisted in shaving the head in front of a line drawn from ear to ear’ (t. of St. John). A form of tonsure was also practised by the priests of Isis.
| 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VI. 167 He took tonsure and habit of clerk, þe ȝere of his age foure and twenty. c 1450 St. Cuthbert (Surtees) 1366 And gaf him tonsour and habite. 1530 Palsgr. 183 Les ordres..benet the first tonsure. 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. ii. ii. §96 No mention herein of settling the Tonsure of Priests..according to the Roman Rite. 1753 Challoner Cath. Chr. Instr. 153 The Clerical Tonsure..is not properly an Order, but only a Preparation for Orders. The Bishop cuts off the Extremities of their Hair, to signify their renouncing the World and its Vanities; and he invests them with a Surplice, and so receives them into the Clergy. 1829 J. Donovan tr. Catech. Counc. Trent ii. vii. §14 In tonsure the hair of the head is cut in form of a crown, and should always be worn in that form, enlarging the crown as one advances in orders. 1842 Hook Ch. Dict. 558 A clerical tonsure was made necessary about the 5th or 6th century. 1846 Sharpe Hist. Egypt xiv. 431 In Rome he was very partial to the Egyptian superstitions, and he had adopted the tonsure, and had his head shaven like a priest of Isis. 1849 Rock Ch. of Fathers I. i. ii. 186 Of the ecclesiastical tonsure..the Roman form was perfectly round; the Irish was made by cutting away the hair from the upper part of the forehead in the figure of a half-moon, with the convex side before. |
b. The part of a priest's or monk's head left bare by shaving the hair.
| [1351–2 Rolls of Parlt. II. 244/2 Gentz de Religion portantz tonsure.] 1430–40 Lydg. Bochas ix. xiv. (MS. Bodl. 263) lf. 418/2 As a prest she [Joan] had a brod tonsure. a 1625 Sir H. Finch Law (1636) 65 But if he shew cause which our law alloweth not (as because hee hath not his tonsure, or ornamentum Clericale, &c.) he shall pay a fine, and yet be driuen to take the felon. 1768 Sterne Sent. Journ., Monk, Calais i, The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure,..might be about seventy. 1849 James Woodman xiii, You must cover the tonsure with this peasant's bonnet. |
† 3. The clipping (a) of coin; (b) of shrubs or hedges. Obs. rare.
| 1621 Bolton Stat. Irel. 12 (Act 25 Hen. VI) Ireland is greatly impoverished..by the..carriage..into England of the silver plate, broken silver Bullion and wedges of silver made of the great Tonsure of the money. 1691 in Archæologia (1796) XII. 185 His yew hedges with trees of the same..kept in pretty shapes with tonsure. Ibid. 186 A fair gravel walk betwixt two yew hedges with rounds and spires of the same, all under smooth tonsure. |
4. attrib. and Comb., as tonsure-cap, tonsure-plate (see quot.).
| 1889 Pall Mall G. 23 July 2/1 His rank..distinguished by the scarlet sash which he wears..and by his tonsure-cap, which is of the same colour. 1891 Cent. Dict., Tonsure-plate, a round thin plate slightly convex so as to fit the top of the head, used to mark the line of the tonsure according to the Roman rite. |
▪ II. ˈtonsure, v.
[f. prec. n. or ad. F. tonsurer (14–15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.) or med.L. tonsūrāre (845 in Du Cange).]
trans. To clip or shave the hair of; to confer the ecclesiastical tonsure upon.
| 1793 Minstrel I. 90, I must tonsure those fine tresses to the due form. 1843 Carlyle Past & Pr. ii. xiv, Now tonsured into a mournful penitent Monk. 1872 O. Shipley Gloss. Eccl. Terms 459 The Greeks tonsured their whole heads, like St. James and the other Apostles. 1878 Maclear Celts viii. (1879) 123 They..were tonsured from ear to ear,—that is, the fore part of the head was made bare, and the hair was allowed to grow only on the back part of the head. |
b. fig. To make bald-headed.
| 1876 W. B. Scott Sonn. 9 And now that age hath shriven and tonsured me. |
Hence ˈtonsuring vbl. n. and ppl. a.
| 1811 Henry & Isabella I. 3 He manifested a sufficient genius at the tonsuring business. 1906 Reader 24 Nov. 123/2 He..gladly followed her advice to remedy with a curled scalp the ‘tonsuring action of middle age’. |