Lately I’ve noticed a couple of grey hairs in my goatee… and some of my friends are getting a few grey hairs, too.  So I’m thinking there must be something bad in the water around here, because I can’t think of any other valid explanation for this.  We need to conduct some type of city water test procedure.  It’s gotta be the water, because I’m nowhere near old enough to have any grey hairs…  🙂

BTW, did you know the word “goatee” is a modified version of “goaty”?  And it’s an Americanism (one of the few words we didn’t steal from other languages).  It was invented between 1835-1844.  It’s derived from “goat”, as you might imagine, because of its resemblance to a goat’s tufted chin.  (And “tufted” is a cool-sounding word, though there’s seldom a good time to use it.)  These days, few people are bothered by a goatee, but when it was first invented, it raised a few eyebrows.  In 1842, William Tappan Thompson wrote :

One chap’s … rigged out like a show monkey, with a little tag of hair hangin down under his chin jest like our old billy goat, that’s a leetle too smart for this latitude, I think.

The first recorded occurrence of the word is from 1844, in a book by Daniel Lee and Joseph H. Frost :

A few individuals … leave what is called, by some of their politer neighbors, a “goaty” under the chin.

It’s been said you learn something every day… and today it is some useless trivia about the origins of the word “goatee”.  But at least you learned something…