vandyke beard

9.6

Short pointed facial hair seen in paintings by Van Dyck

noun
/ˈvændaɪk bɪrd/

: barba de vandyke

Many men choose to style their facial hair as a Vandyke beard to resemble classic portraits.

Examples

The artist depicted a nobleman with a Vandyke beard, capturing its unique shape.
She's now telling that he had to grow a Vandyke beard... ...so you can't see him laughing at you.

The Women (1939)
He has a Vandyke beard and wears a cut-off sweatshirt, dungarees, and dark glasses, and has the phone wedged into his shoulder as he tears open a large cardboard box.

Fiction book (1994)
He has a Vandyke beard that gives him a distinguished look.

Synonyms

vandyke

vsvandyke beard

9.9

A short, pointed beard with a separate mustache

is the same style but expressed as the full phrase including facial hair

Surface Forms

vandyke beard singular

vandyke beards plural

Morphology

vandyke + beard

Because 'vandyke' denotes a particular beard style (named after Anthony van Dyck), combining it with 'beard' yields a directly compositional meaning: a beard in the Vandyke style. For a learner who already knows both constituent meanings, the phrase is predictable and therefore transparent.

Etymology

Vandyke beard comes from the painter Anthony van Dyck, who often painted men with a small, pointed beard and a thin moustache. That's why vandyke beard means 'a short, pointed beard' today.