hirsute means covered in hair or bristles; hairy. It carries an Arena rating of 1486, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, hirsute ranks #2,498 of 14,340 for Most Vivid Words, #2,548 of 14,322 for Scariest Words, #2,574 of 14,448 for Funniest Words, #7,100 of 14,440 for Most Satisfying to Say.
hirsute is pronounced /həːˈsjuːt/.
Why “hirsute” is a great word
Covered with coarse or bristly hair. From Latin hirsūtus ("shaggy, hairy, bristly"), first attested in English in the early 17th century. Unlike "glabrous," which denotes a deliberate, biological smoothness, or "shaggy," which evokes a romantic, unkempt wilderness, hirsute speaks of a dense, wiry profusion—an adjective of precision, not disorder. It is the rough, wire-brush texture of a wild boar’s back, the alarming tuft sprouting from a human ear in middle age, the dense, matted undercoat that traps burrs and buries ticks—a testament to an untamed, evolutionary ruggedness that civilization perpetually seeks to shear away.
Etymology
From Latin hirsūtus (“shaggy, hairy”).
adj
- Covered in hair or bristles; hairy.“A third eminent cause of iealousie may be this, when hee that is deformed hirsute and ragged, and very vertuously giuen, will marry some very faire niec piece, or some light huswife, he begins to misdoubt (as well he may) she doth not affect him.”
noun
- Someone or something that is hirsute.“Virchow is mentioned as having described the “Russian hairy men” the “hirsutes,” who, although their bodies were covered with a thick growth of hair were nevertheless almost entirely devoid of teeth.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.