elflock

noun

1. (archaic)A lock of hair that is tangled.

   “[T]heir wide Farthingales extreamly fill the Coach, an one would take their thick and knotty Elflocks for Hempen ſtuffing, broke out of an old pack-ſaddle.”

   “Never was even washerwoman more untidy. A cap all rags, from which the hair came straggling in elf-locks over a face which generally looked red-hot […]”

   “All went unshaven, and many had long, filthy elf-locks hanging about their faces, and ragged beards reaching to their girdles.”

   “The face which emerged was not reassuring.[…]. He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.”