Growing up in New England, I learned “blond-headed”.

“Blond-haired” seems slightly odd to my ear, though I probably use it from time to time. It’s nice to have some extra words for the same thing to use as an option.

A quick check on google books shows some use of “blond headed” around the 1930’s and onward, but it appears to be far less common than “blond haired”.  Roughly the same for “blonde headed” vs. “blonde haired”.

Would I ever use “black-headed” or “brown-headed”? No.

Would I ever use “black-headed” or “brown-headed”? No.

Nor, I think, would most people; yet “redhead” and red-headed” have long been in common enough use—and not as slang, either (e.g. A.C. Doyle’s “The Red-headed League"). Just goes to show how irrational English usage can be.

Another case would be “bald-headed”

Not quite - bald is used in other contexts (Mussorgskij’s tone poem usually called A Night on a Bald Mountain springs to mind.
And on the original topic, I’ve heard some kinds of beer referred to as blonde.

There’s also bald-faced as in “bald-faced lie.”

Re: cuffs and collars

I’ve heard it in the States. Green’s first citation (which postdates the Bond film) is from a 1976 U. S. novel. “curtains match the carpet” and “curtains match the drapes” are common variants.

Interesting about naïf/naïve; I’d call a man ‘naïve’ without hesitation.

Here in Leftpondia women (not men) will sometimes admit to having had a ‘blonde moment’, roughly equivalent to a ‘senior moment’.

Coincidental that lionello and aldi mentioned The Daughter of Time (first published 1951), because in it Josephine Tey has her protagonist reflect on Lady Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen, thus: 

She had been shut away from the world; that indestructibly virtuous beauty with the gilt hair.

Why ‘gilt’, he wondered for the first time. Silver-gilt probably; she had been radiantly fair. A pity that the word ‘blonde’ had degenerated to the point where it had almost a secondary meaning.

I’ve alway assumed that Tey meant by this that blonde tended to imply ‘dyed’, rather than ‘dumb’.

‘Blonde’ has so many potential implications that ‘blond’ has not. They simply are not equivalent in meaning, as ‘naive’ and ‘naif’ are, and therefore aren’t interchangeable.

Syntinen Laulu - 11 August 2012 06:47 AM

Today a journalist in the London Times used ‘blond-haired’ twice in a single article. That’s a phrase that always grates on me because it’s a pure pleonasm…

As is ‘the London Times‘.

ROFL
xxx

Ouch!

Don’t bleed too profusely, Syntinen Laulu. Unless Wikipedia‘s wrong on this one, you got the name almost right, pleonasm or not:

On 26 July 2012, to coincide with the official start of the London 2012 Olympics and the issuing of a series of souvenir front covers, The Times added the suffix “of London” to its masthead.  Wikipedia

When you’re quoting a Wikipedia article, it’s a kindness to others to link to it.  And by following their citation for that claim, I learn that that special masthead was only during the 2012 Olympics.

Thank you for the reminder, lh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times

And I did say almost right. Syntinen Laulu was only a few days late. Also, further to assuage her pain, let me remind Syntinen Laulu that only the other day, a learned member of this forum came out in spirited defense of pleonasm, characterizing Strunk & White’s injunction to avoid unnecessary words as “silly”. Even Shakespeare goes in for pleonasm:

Polonius: “What do you read, my lord?”
Hamlet: “Words, words, words”. (Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2).

;-)

Humor aside. (And it was funny, kurwamac.) I see insistence that the paper be referred to as The Times with no modification as blimpism. There are many Times in the world (including one on this side of the pond that has a circulation nearly four times larger). Modifying the name to make it clear exactly what publication you refer to is a much needed courtesy to the reader.

“London Times” and ”Times of London” or ”Times (London)” are perfectly okay in my book. But don’t write London Times or Times of London.