busby: [18] Busby originally meant ‘large bushy wig’, and so may be related to buzz wig, a term with similar meaning current during the 19th century (and perhaps the inspiration for Sergeant Buzfuz, the lawyer in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers). The application to the full-dress fur hat worn by hussars in the British army dates from the early 19th century, but its extension to the Guards’ bearskin (still regarded as a solecism in some quarters) seems to have been a 20thcentury development.
busby (n.)
"fur hat worn by hussars on parade," 1807, earlier "a kind of bushy, tall wig" (1764), of unknown origin, though it is both a place name and a surname in England. Related: Busbied.
