Show whiskers whiskers was a word formerly used to designate the haar on the up per lip scott more than once speaks of whiskers on the upper lip and so doea defoe in robinson crusoe johnson defined a whisker as the hair growing on the upper up or cheek unshaven a mustachio it seems to have taken its name from a fancied resemblance to a small brush to whisk properly meaning to sweep and a whisker having been a par nicular kind of leather brush also in the slang of a former time a switch or rod in the seventeenth century a whisker signified among other things a brazen lie a whopper |