Saturday Morning Beard Fact

There have been various nicknames for whiskers. Some referred to them as ‘Piccadilly weepers’ because they were worn by the kind of dandy who could be seen in London’s Piccadilly. During the American Civil War, the word ‘sideburns’ also came into common use, inspired be the bushy moustache of Major General Ambrose Burnside, which had been allowed to connect with his whiskers and formed an impressively thick and unbroken line of hair right across his face. The term ‘mutton chop’ was also common parlance, used to describe the type of whiskers that were roughly triangular, rather like the shape of a meat chop.

Source: Moustaches, Whiskers & Beards, Lucinda Hawksley