Meaning & Analysis
Someone with a great deal of natural hair is mocked as having little intelligence.
Insights
Appearance over substance
Luxuriant hair becomes a stand-in for outward show that overgrows inward sense; the body’s abundance is read as the mind’s lack.
Anti-vanity caution
It rebukes pride in natural endowment (a ‘bush’ of hair), warning that flaunted looks often mask thin judgment.
Misreading of signs
Treats a bodily marker as proof of character, exposing the human habit of drawing lazy inferences from surfaces.
Generational style jab
Targets fashion—long hair, perukes, fur wraps—as moral laxity; the barb polices taste by equating luxuriance with folly.
Early modern grooming politics
Debate over men’s long hair (gallants, ‘bushy’ styles) and women’s elaborate dress fueled jokes that ‘more hair than wit,’ letting moralists attack sartorial excess without naming classes directly.
The Samson irony
Folklore links hair with strength or sanctity, yet this proverb inverts the symbolism: plenty of hair here signals mental deficit, not power—satire trumps myth.
Gendered edge
Applied to both sexes in the sources, it nonetheless participates in broader scolds of female adornment and male coxcombry, using hair as a safe proxy to shame desire and display.
Physiognomic fallacy
The line exemplifies a pseudo-logic—reading intellect from appearance—revealing cultural comfort with quick, prejudicial diagnostics.
Theater and street wit
Playwrights mine the quip for instant character sketch: a single glance (‘that head of hair’) licenses an audience to expect fatuity before a word is spoken.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Sets ‘more hair’ against ‘wit,’ compressing a visual abundance versus mental scarcity into a neat snap-judgment.
Metonymy
‘Hair’ stands for the whole package of display and fashion; ‘wit’ for judgment and intellect.
Hyperbole
Overstates both the hair and the deficiency to heighten comic sting and memorability.
Alliteration
The h/w echoes (‘hair’/‘wit’) lend bounce to the barb, aiding its proverbial spread.
Ellipsis
Telegraphic phrasing (noun + verdict) mimics a street-level label more than a sentence, sharpening its bite.
Transcription
Quotations
Thy tales (quoth he) shew long heare, and short wit, wife.
Thy head is for thy shoulders now more fitt; Thou hast less haire vppon it, but more witt.
Haire? It’s the basest stubble; in scorne of it, This Prouerbe sprung, he has more haire then wit.
I haue got his hayre; if I coulde come as easily by his wit.
Is there any scarcitie of haire Boy? —Somewhat thin, and yet there is more hayre then wit.
A tisty-tosty-wag-feather, one that hath more haire then wit.
Make much of thy hair, thy wit will suit it rarely.
Ushers should have much wit, but little hair.
Many of these the prouerbe well doth fit, Which sayes, Bush naturall, More haire then wit.
Now is the old prouerbe really perform’d, More haire than wit.
The women goe wrapt in so much fur, that of necessity they must have more haire then wit.
A simple Gull; more hair than wit, saith the English.
(more Hairs).
Shakespeare Citations
There’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
She hath more hair than wit.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.