The RA Cowlick

Until recently it's been mostly a Lucas thing, but look who else is sporting the RA cowlick..

COW-LICK– noun

a tuft of hair that grows in a direction different from that of the rest of the hair.

Word Origin & History: 1590s, from cow + lick.

Online Etymology Dictionary, 2010 Douglas Harper
cow·lick (kou'lĭk')
n. A projecting tuft of hair on the head that grows in a different direction from the rest of the hair and will not lie flat.

A lock or tuft of hair growing in a different direction from the rest of the hair is called a cowlick. Most authorities, including the major dictionaries, agree that the reason for this expression is that the tuft looks as though a cow had licked it.

But why a cow? Why not a catlick or a doglick or a horselick? Cats, dogs, and horses like to lick, too. They lick themselves, their young, and even nearby humans.

The exact origin of the expression cowlick is buried in the linguistic past. However, there may be a hint in Norse mythology. Before the beginning of the world, the divine primeval cow Audumbla licked the cosmic salty ice blocks, and as she licked, a man's hair appeared; when she continued to lick, the man's head and finally the rest of his body were revealed. Thus the cow gave form to Buri, the ancestor of the gods. Notice that the first body part that the cow licked was the hair. This myth was recorded in the early 1200s (by Snorri Sturluson), but, of course, the story itself probably goes back much further in time, and it may have influenced, or reflected, the common linguistic imagery of other Europeans.

The word cowlick was in use in England by at least 1598. In that year Richard Haydocke published his English translation of a 1584 painting tract by the Italian writer G.P. Lomazzo, which contains the following passage: "The lockes or plaine feakes of haire called cow-lickes, are made turning upwards." So the cowlick imagery was familiar in Italian as well. The passage is quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines cowlick as "a lock or curl of hair which looks as if it had been licked by a cow."
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No one is exempt from the dreaded cowlick.  Those who have one know exactly of what I speak.  When the temps start to reach sweltering 90deg each summer, we're tempted to get an ultra short cut--don't do it unless you're fond of those stubborn shafts  of hair at the crown that refuse to sit down.

                                      
                                         RA's is adorable just like the rest of him...

Lucas' is spikey perfection..