A youth side lock was a plaited lock of hair which pre-pubescent ancient Egyptian youths, particularly boys, wore on the side of otherwise shaven heads. References show that boys would stop wearing the side lock once they had been circumcised around the age of fourteen years.
Ancient Egyptian art also shows children as nude with a finger held to the lip.
Famous quotes containing the words youth, side and/or lock:
“But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy Love.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)
“Telephone poles were matchsticks, put there to be snapped off at a whim. Dogs trotting across the road were suddenly big trucks. Old ladies turned into moving—vans. Everything was too bright, but very funny and made for my delight. And about half a mile from my long liquid breakfast I turned carefully down a side street and parked, and sat beaming happily through the tannic fog for about an hour, remembering how witty we all had been, how handsome and talented ... [ellipsis in original]”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)