One of the world's most famous blondes Marilyn Monroe, who was in fact a natural brunetteBlond ( feminine, blonde) is a hair colour found in certain mammals characterised by low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin and higher levels of the pale pigment phæomelanin , in common with red or ginger hair. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some sort of yellowish colour, going from the very pale blond caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment, to reddish "strawberry" blond colours or golden brownish blond colours, the latter with more eumelanin.
Blond hair can be found among certain races of humans and breeds of dogs and cats, among other mammalian species.
1 Etymology, spelling, and grammar
The adjective is a relatively recent borrowing into EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil from FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to (the traditional English terms for blond being "fair-haired", "flaxen", or "tow-haired"), and careful writers still distinguish between the masculineThe word masculine can refer to: the property of being biologically male masculinity, a traditionally male gender role the masculine grammatical gender. blond and the feminine blonde. However, most people do not borrow French's system of grammatical genderIn linguistics, grammatical genders also called noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. Source of d along with the word or confuse the two, the tendency being for North AmericaNorth America is the third largest continent in area and the fourth ranked in population. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Oceans to use the masculine in either case, and other English-speakers to use the feminine in either case. The feminine is also used as a noun meaning "a blonde woman or girl". The French word, in turn, derives from the LatinAlternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and ma blondus or blundus, meaning yellow.
The word—with one spelling or the other—is also occasionally used to refer to objects that have a colour reminiscent of fair hair. Examples include dolls' hair, pale wood, and lagerLager beers are alcoholic beverages of German and Czech origin, taking their name from the German lagern ("to store"). Brewed principally from malted barley (no cane sugar, an adjunct), hops and water using bottom-fermentation (the yeast, Saccharomyces uv beer1990s England when people received less than a pint (568 ml) of beer for the price of a pint. A beer is any variety of alcoholic beverages produced by the fermentation of starchy material derived from grains or other plant sources. The production of beer.
2 Distribution among humans
Fair hair is characteristic of the peoples of Northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia (Very pale hair is often referred to as Nordic blond.). It is genetically associated with paler eye-colour ( blue and green) and pale (sometimes freckled) skin tone. However, red and brown hair is also very common in these regions; and, conversely, there is a small minority of blond people even among dark-skinned populations in places such as North Africa.
It is also normal for hair to darken through childhood. Caucasian babies are generally born with the slightest wisp of fair hair, and then go on to grow hair of the colour that they are genetically programmed to grow. Darkening can even occur relatively late in life (Greying of hair is a separate issue, though.). Strong sunlight also lightens hair of any pigmentation, to varying degrees.
