"bobby pin" meaning in English

See bobby pin in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: bobby pins [plural], bobbypin [alternative]
Etymology: From bob haircut, which the bobby pin was designed to keep under control. Head templates: {{en-noun}} bobby pin (plural bobby pins)
  1. (US) A type of double-pronged hairpin. Tags: US Synonyms: hairgrip, kirby grip

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From bob haircut, which the bobby pin was designed to keep under control.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bobby pins",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "bobbypin",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bobby pin (plural bobby pins)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Fasteners",
          "orig": "en:Fasteners",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Hair",
          "orig": "en:Hair",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              140,
              150
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1990, Stephen King, The Moving Finger:",
          "text": "[H]e still didn't like looking down the drain. The brass cross-hatch inside that was supposed to catch things like clots of hair or dropped bobby-pins had disappeared years ago, and so there was only a dark hole rimmed by a circle of tarnished steel.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              51,
              61
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2014, Janet Cantrell, chapter 7, in Fat Cat at Large, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Prime Crime, →ISBN, page 58:",
          "text": "Her pinned-up hairdo was drooping and she shed two bobby pins on the floor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A type of double-pronged hairpin."
      ],
      "id": "en-bobby_pin-en-noun-RerFmBRg",
      "links": [
        [
          "hairpin",
          "hairpin"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) A type of double-pronged hairpin."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "hairgrip"
        },
        {
          "word": "kirby grip"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "bobby pin"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From bob haircut, which the bobby pin was designed to keep under control.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bobby pins",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "bobbypin",
      "tags": [
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bobby pin (plural bobby pins)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Fasteners",
        "en:Hair"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              140,
              150
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1990, Stephen King, The Moving Finger:",
          "text": "[H]e still didn't like looking down the drain. The brass cross-hatch inside that was supposed to catch things like clots of hair or dropped bobby-pins had disappeared years ago, and so there was only a dark hole rimmed by a circle of tarnished steel.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              51,
              61
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2014, Janet Cantrell, chapter 7, in Fat Cat at Large, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Prime Crime, →ISBN, page 58:",
          "text": "Her pinned-up hairdo was drooping and she shed two bobby pins on the floor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A type of double-pronged hairpin."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "hairpin",
          "hairpin"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) A type of double-pronged hairpin."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "hairgrip"
    },
    {
      "word": "kirby grip"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bobby pin"
}

Download raw JSONL data for bobby pin meaning in English (1.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.