Where Do Sideburns Come From?

Ambrose Burnside was the namesake of the word sideburn. This portrait was taken circa 1860 by Matthew Brady, the father of photojournalism.

The term sideburns is a 19th-century corruption of the word burnsides, named after American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside, a relatively unremarkable  soldier known for his unusual facial hairstyle that connected his thick beard by way of a mustache, but left his chin clean-shaven.

Source: The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg
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