August 18, 1998

bigwig

I was having a conversation at the office today in which I referred to the "corporate big wigs." It dawned on me today that I did not know the origin of that rather peculiar expression, but I imagine its etymology is interesting. Please enlighten me.

The origin of bigwig (now usually spelled as one word), meaning 'a person of importance', is the one that's too obvious for anyone to take seriously.

Back in the dim and distant past, before the days of hair products, bad hair days were much more common. Rather than having to deal with this problem, people wore wigs, or artificial hair. Though the use of wigs was known in ancient Greece and Rome, we are here concerned with the wig worn as a distinctive piece of costume.

This trend apparently started in France in the early seventeenth century; the fashion reached England later in the seventeenth century. England being England, wigs were differentiated based on class and profession. Men of great importance naturally wore larger wigs than the rabble, and so they were called big wigs.

Bigwig was first used just after the turn of the eighteenth century, and was generally humorous or derisive at the time. It spawned a number of derived terms such as bigwiggery and bigwiggism. The wearing of wigs gradually declined in England among doctors and clergymen; by the coronation of Queen Victoria, for example, only the Archibishop of Canterbury still wore a wig. Wigs are still worn as part of the costume of certain officials and jurists, though there is a movement to abolish their use entirely.

The word wig itself is from the late seventeenth century, a shortening of periwig, from peruke, a Middle French word for a wig whose ultimate origin is uncertain.