unibrow

(YOO.nuh.brow)

n.

Eyebrow hair that also appears above the nose, giving the appearance of a single, continuous eyebrow. Also: uni-brow.

— unibrowed adj.

Example Citations:

The infomercial does proudly announce that the Micro Touch makes quick work of remedying "unibrows" and, for those of you afflicted with one continuous eyebrow, I suspect the Micro Touch might be able to handle the softer hair in the center of a brow without cutting the wide path of a safety razor. But that would be serious niche marketing.

— Matthew Kaufman, "Trimmer passer muster, but only by a nose," Hartford Courant, March 7, 2004

Many men dismiss their own unruly nose hairs, he says, but would be freaked out by a woman with a "full-on nose bush." So get rid of the double standard and trim, he says. And divide and conquer that unibrow. Remember, Douglas says, "two eyes, two eyebrows!"

— Brenda Moore, "Men learning it's OK to take care of their looks, feelings," Monterey County Herald, March 2, 2004

Earliest Citation:

Here is that first pair of eyebrow pluckers, which inexplicably made me tear up and sneeze whenever I used them. I was deathly afraid that my eyebrows would grow together and be a unibrow.

— Robin Abcarian, "Ah, sweet vanity of female youth," Detroit Free Press, September 29, 1988

Notes:

In the second example citation, "Douglas" is Kyan Douglas, the grooming guru for the show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The term unibrow has been around since at least the late 1980s (although I seem to remember hearing it before then, but there doesn't appear to be any written evidence of it prior to 1988), but there has been a surge in citations over the past six months or so as the word rides the coattails of the popular show.

The synonym monobrow (or mono-brow) is in the Oxford English Dictionary with an earliest citation from 1987.

Related Words:

bar-code hairstyle

Boyzilian

manscaping

metrosexual

retrosexual

Category:

Appearance and Grooming