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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hairpin
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a hairpin bend (=a very sharp bend in which a road changes direction, usually on a mountain)
▪ The road wound up the mountain in a series of hairpin bends.
hairpin bend
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
bend
▪ There are terrifying hairpin bends, sharp dips and sudden ascents.
▪ When not thinking about puking your guts up round every hairpin bend, scenery magnificent.
▪ She floated above and ahead of them, and her eyes narrowed on to a shimmer of water at a hairpin bend.
▪ No one tackles its succession of hairpin bends unless they have to: it is a particularly dangerous stretch of road.
▪ It should be noted that hairpin bends are often necessary geographical features in high and exciting terrain.
▪ Some of the hairpin bends had Ruth clinging to her seat and holding her breath.
▪ When the road turns sharply left in a hairpin bend, take the footpath ahead into the woodland.
▪ Climbing the steep mountain roads round hairpin bends was quite dramatic and more than once I had glimpses of distant eagles.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As the riders struggle up through the hairpins, you can hear the screams of encouragement from below.
▪ Both feature hairpin curves and one-lane tunnels.
▪ From that jumping-off point, the plot hits hairpin turns, sudden cliff drops and delirious loops of logic and technology.
▪ It is a hairpin turn along a treacherous route.
▪ Much jewellery, especially gemstones and hairpins, was itself used as a vehicle for portraiture.
▪ She dealt with a stray wisp of grey hair and pushed her hairpins firmly into place.
▪ The relationship to the hairpin vortices described above is not wholly clear.
▪ The taxi banked into a hairpin turn that squeezed them together, the pressure from her increasing by her own will.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hairpin

Hairpin \Hair"pin`\ (-p[i^]n`), n. A pin, usually forked, or of bent wire, for fastening the hair in place, -- used by women.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
hairpin

also hair-pin, 1788 (two words), from hair + pin (n.). A hairpin turn, etc., is from 1906. Hairpin (or clothespin) was American English slang for "person" c.1880-1910, especially in the expression "That's the kind of hairpin I am."

Wiktionary
hairpin

a. Characterized by an abrupt or extreme bend; shaped like a hairpin. n. 1 A pin or fastener for the hair. 2 (context biology English) A kind of ribozyme; (w: Hairpin ribozyme).

WordNet
hairpin

n. a double pronged pin used to hold women's hair in place

Wikipedia
Hairpin

A hair pin or hairpin is a long device used to hold a person's hair in place. It may be used simply to secure long hair out of the way for convenience or as part of an elaborate hairstyle or coiffure. The earliest evidence for dressing the hair may be seen in carved "venus figurines" such as the Venus of Brassempouy and the Venus of Willendorf. The creation of different hairstyles, especially among women, seems to be common to all cultures and all periods and many past, and current, societies use hairpins.

Hairpins made of metal, ivory, bronze, carved wood, etc. were used in ancient Assyria and Egypt for securing decorated hairstyles. Such hairpins suggest, as graves show, that many were luxury objects among the Egyptians and later the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. Major success came in 1901 with the invention of the spiral hairpin by New Zealand inventor Ernest Godward. This was a predecessor of the hair clip.

The hairpin may be decorative and encrusted with jewels and ornaments, or it may be utiliarian, and designed to be almost invisible while holding a hairstyle in place.

Some hairpins are a single straight pin, but modern versions are more likely to be constructed from different lengths of wire that are bent in half with a u-shaped end and a few kinks along the two opposite portions. The finished pin may vary from two to six inches in final length. The length of the wires enables placement in several styles of hairdos to hold the style in place. The kinks enable retaining the pin during normal movements.

A hairpin patent was issued to Kelly Chamandy in 1925.

Hairpin (disambiguation)

A hairpin is a device used to hold a person's hair in place.

Hairpin or Hairpins may also refer to:

  • Hairpin turn, a tight turn on a road
  • Hairpin cotter, a formed wire fastener most commonly used in clevis pins
  • Hairpin clip, a formed wire fastener designed for use in grooved shafts
  • A hairpin loop, a pattern in DNA or RNA in biochemistry
  • β-Hairpin, a secondary structure motif of proteins
  • Hairpins (film), a 1920 film directed by Fred Niblo
  • Hairpin, in music, the nickname for crescendo and decrescendo markings. See Dynamics (music)#Gradual changes
  • The Devil's Hairpin, a 1957 American feature film about car racing
  • Hairpin Arts Center, a community art center in Chicago
  • Hairpin Banksia, woody shrub.
  • Hairpin RNA, an artificial RNA molecule
  • Hairpin lace, a lace-making technique
  • Hairpin ribozyme, a small section of RNA that can act as a ribozyme
  • Ramsey Hairpin, a hairpin bend on the course of the Isle of Man TT Races
  • The Hairpin, a women's website
  • The Human Hairpin, a nickname for the American boxer, Harry Harris
  • Hairpin network address translation

Usage examples of "hairpin".

If it feels a ring, an ear bob, something in the cunny, even so much as a single hairpin, it refuses to let you pass the door.

Tess, who still wore her old black pelisse, and who had in her encounter with Nidget lost all her hairpins so that her pale curls were as usual in wild disarray, certainly lacked the least appearance of a gentlewoman.

The road snaked upward in hairpin bends as far as the Ermita de las Nieves before sloping down to the coast.

She refastened a few hairpins, then found her burgundy shawl and draped it over her shoulders.

Baroness, attempting to upsweep her hair and hold it with the hairpins in her mouth.

Teague stepped forward to speak to the Yss who had pulled the hairpin from her hair.

From its sharp hairpins you can see the Mediterranean on a fine day, or at least the shiny new autoroute that swings inland at Cannes and goes past Aix and Avignon.

Vesuvius, left the expressway at Castellammare, and piloted the car around the mountainous hairpins of the Sorrento peninsula.

Rhoda took their battered hats, led the women upstairs for hairpins, and presently fed them all with tea-cakes, poached eggs, anchovy toast, and drinks from a coromandel-wood liqueur case which Midmore had never known that he possessed.

She rushes back upstairs and dresses faster than she ever has before--donning pantalettes, camisole, dress, coatee, stockings, garters, shoes, gloves and bonnet in much the same time that Lady Bridgelow might deliberate over the placement of a single hairpin.

The roads in the Ardennes were as narrow and crooked as the rivers, full of hairpin curves and steep grades.

On 13 April 1945, the Third Battalion, advancing along Highway 9 from Monglo Hill toward Baguio, employed medium tanks against enemy positions in caves along the road, and reached the west slope of Hairpin Hill after an advance of 1500 yards against moderate resistance.

She had hardly taken her eyes from Tish, who had lifted the engine hood and was poking at the carbureter with a hairpin.

Clarice had covered with a lace cloth and with balms and creams, hairpins and swaths of cloth.

When all were naked, without even a hairpin, he carried you and led us through two more gates into a very strange place in Ty Station.