Word.ws English Dictionary

silly-how

silly-how noun: the caul which sometimes envelops the top of a child's head after birth.

Noun

silly-how (plural silly-hows)

  1. (archaic, dialectal) The caul which sometimes envelops the top of a child's head after birth.
    • Great conceits are raised of the involution or meembranous covering, commonly called the silly-how, that sometimes is found about the heads of children upon their birth, and is therefore preserved with great care […]1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, V.23

Forms of silly-how

pluralsilly-hows

Origin of silly-how

From silly, seely + early form of houve.

Questions about silly-how

What does silly-how mean?
Silly-how means the caul which sometimes envelops the top of a child's head after birth.
What part of speech is silly-how?
Silly-how is a noun.
What is the plural of silly-how?
The plural of silly-how is silly-hows.

Words near silly-how in the dictionary

  1. silly straws
  2. silly string
  3. silly strings
  4. silly window syndrome
  5. silly-billy
  6. silly-how
  7. silly-hows
  8. sillycidal
  9. sillycide
  10. sillycided
  11. sillycides

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: silly-how (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “silly-how.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/silly-how. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.