Definition of "peruke" []

• A wig, especially one worn by men in the 17th and 18th centuries; a periwig. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His silver-white hair when he removed his peruke was a venerable spectacle."
• "We would have thought it vile poltroonery and macaronism to have worn wigs -- to say nothing of powder -- unless, indeed, the peruke was a true Malplaquet club or Dettingen scratch."
• "Lean and well-built, far advanced in the thirties, a very large nose, and altogether marked features: he wore from morning till night a scratch which might well have been called a peruke, but dressed himself very neatly, and never went out but with his sword by his side, and his hat under his arm."