Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun plural Heavy side-whiskers worn with the chin clean-shaven.
from The Century Dictionary.
- A style of beard such as that affected by General Burnside (1824–81), consisting of a mustache, whiskers, and a clean-shaven chin.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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These were popularly called burnsides, but the name later got twisted around to sideburns.
unknown title 2009
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Nobody cares a rap whether Saunders, middle-aged and unheroic bachelor, with his precise little "burnsides," won the heart of the pert Miss Pelham, precise in character if not always so in type.
The Man from Brodney's George Barr McCutcheon 1897
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Great bushy burnsides furzed out to his jawbone, and he peered from under the brim's shadow with dark eyes, the lids swollen and hooded as a raptor's.
Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 2003
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Take lamp soot and draw mustaches and burnsides on their faces, carry around unlit cigars and mimic the silly gestures men used in smoking them.
Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 2003
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Take lamp soot and draw mustaches and burnsides on their faces, carry around unlit cigars and mimic the silly gestures men used in smoking them.
Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 1997
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Great bushy burnsides furzed out to his jawbone, and he peered from under the brim's shadow with dark eyes, the lids swollen and hooded as a raptor's.
Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 1997
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For those of us who were taught in grade school to revere him and in college to shrug him off, the beard is an obstacle to fresh acquaintance, and Newton Arvin has wisely chosen a frontispiece in which the forty-eight-year-old man is obscured only by burnsides.
Longfellow Wilbur, Richard 1963
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This strange assortment of whiskers of different fashions on various parts of his face, imperial, goatee, burnsides, he brought back with him.
Walking-Stick Papers Robert Cortes Holliday
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His shoulders were massive and square, his chin and mouth were square, his burnsides were square cut, and he had a square head and wore a square-topped derby.
By Advice of Counsel Arthur Cheney Train 1910
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Then Melville himself came in, brushing back his white tufted burnsides and licking his lips and blinking his eyes -- looking for all the world like a cat at its toilet.
The Deluge David Graham Phillips 1889
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