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Comb over

type of hairstyle commonly worn by bald men to cover the baldness

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ2439902
Source-derived summary

A comb over or combover is a hairstyle for bald or balding men in which the hair is grown long and combed over the short hair area to minimize the appearance of the scalp. Sometimes the parting is lowered so that more hair can be used to cover the head.

Patent

On 10 May 1977, Donald J. Smith and his father, Frank J. Smith, of Orlando, Florida, were awarded a patent (U.S. patent 4,022,227) for their variation of the comb over that conceals baldness by combing long hair in three separate directions.

See also

List of hairstyles

Pattern hair loss § Society and culture

References

Further reading

Walker, W. H. (2010). "Is the "Comb Over" Dying? A Mouse Model for Male Pattern Baldness (Androgenic Alopecia)". Endocrinology. 151 (5): 1981–1983. doi:10.1210/en.2010-0217. PMID 20410210.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Comb over” as type of hairstyle commonly worn by bald men to cover the baldness. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Comb, over and type.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1977, 2010, 1981, 1983—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Comb, over and type providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Comb over”, the useful work is to connect “type of hairstyle commonly worn by bald men to cover the baldness” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2439902. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1977, 2010, 1981 and 1983.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Comb over” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.