The other day I went to a meeting with my boss. Although it has mostly been a really mild winter, there were a few really cold days last week, and this was one of them. We went outside to get in the truck, and lo and behold, there was hoar frost on it. It had sprouted up on the edges of the pickup and in the bed like hair grows on a head. It reminded me of someone I knew in junior high who used to "frost" his hair. (He once frosted his eyebrows, too -- made them bleached, when he had black hair. It looked kind of interesting for awhile, especially since he stopped about halfway through and decided he didn't want to go through with it.)
It looked like little frost grass had grown up, as almost all hoar frost does. I was struck by the uniformity of it -- the little crystalline warriors marching up and down the truck rail. I wonder why they call it hoar frost instead of hair frost. Maybe it all started as a misunderstanding...someone said, "This looks like hair!" and his or her friend thought something else had been said. Probably someone with a more serious interest in linguistics could tell me. Etymology, not entomology, right? Just like hair, hoar. (And I know some of you reading this wanted to add, "Har," as in hardy hard har NOT FUNNY, after that last sentence.)
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