[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

hairy \hair"y\ -y^, a.
   1. bearing or covered with hair; made of or resembling hair;
      rough with hair; hirsute.
      1913 webster

            his mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. --milton.
      1913 webster

   2. very complicated, difficult, or involved; as, a hairy
      problem; a hairy equation. colloq.
      pjc

   3. dangerous or frightening; as, a hairy encounter with a
      mugger.
      pjc

[2] : WordNet (r) 2.0

hairy
     adj 1: having or covered with hair; "jacob was a hairy man"; "a
            hairy caterpillar" syn: hirsute ant: hairless
     2: hazardous and frightening; "hairy moments in the mountains"
     also: hairiest, hairier
see also:
hirsute hairless hairiest hairier 

[3] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

145 moby thesaurus words for "hairy":
   herculean, abstruse, arduous, asperous, barbellate, barfy, bearded,
   bewhiskered, bristled, bristling, bristly, brutal, bum, bushy,
   capillary, chancy, cheesy, cirrose, cirrous, comate, complex,
   complicated, confused, confusing, craggy, crappy, creepy, critical,
   crummy, dangerous, delicate, demanding, difficile, difficult,
   dirty, downy, exacting, fibered, fibroid, fibrous, flagelliform,
   fleecy, flocculent, flossy, fluffy, formidable, frightening,
   fringy, funicular, furry, fuzzy, glochidiate, godawful, goshawful,
   gossamery, grim, hairlike, hard, hard-earned, hard-fought, harsh,
   hazardous, hirsute, hispid, icky, intricate, jagged, jawbreaking,
   jeopardous, knotted, knotty, laborious, lanate, ligamental, matted,
   mean, nappy, nerve-racking, no picnic, not easy, operose, perilous,
   pilose, precarious, problematic, pubescent, punk, putrid, rigorous,
   risky, ropy, rough, rugged, scabrous, scary, scraggy,
   set with thorns, setaceous, setose, setous, severe, shagged,
   shaggy, shitty, silky, spiny, steep, stinking, stinky, strenuous,
   strigal, strigate, strigose, stringy, stubbled, stubbly, studded,
   taeniate, taeniform, tangled, thorny, threadlike, thready,
   ticklish, toilsome, tough, treacherous, trichoid, tricky, tufted,
   uncertain, uneven, unhealthy, unshaven, unshorn, unsmooth, unsound,
   uphill, vomity, whiskered, wicked, wiry, woolly, worrying,
   yecchy

[4] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

hairy adj. 1. annoyingly complicated. "dwim is incredibly hairy." 2.
   incomprehensible. "dwim is incredibly hairy." 3. of people,
   high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. hard
   to explain except in context: "he knows this hairy lawyer who says
   there's nothing to worry about." see also hirsute.

   there is a theorem in simplicial homology theory which states that any
   continuous tangent field on a 2-sphere is null at least in a point.
   mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term `hairy' with
   the informal version of this theorem; "you can't comb a hairy ball
   smooth." previous versions of this entry associating the above informal
   statement with the brouwer fixed-point theorem were incorrect.

   the adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use
   among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was equivalent
   to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very likely ancestral to the
   hackish use. in fact the noun `long-hair' was at the time used to
   describe a person satisfying sense 3. both senses probably passed out of
   use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s
   counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant
   relic.

   in british mainstream use, "hairy" means "dangerous", and
   consequently, in british programming terms, "hairy" may be used to
   denote complicated and/or incomprehensible code, but only if that
   complexity or incomprehesiveness is also considered dangerous.


see also:
dwim hirsute 

[5] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

hairy
     
        1. annoyingly complicated.  "dwim is incredibly hairy."
     
        2. incomprehensible.  "dwim is incredibly hairy."
     
        3. of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert,
        and/or incomprehensible.  hard to explain except in context:
        "he knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry
        about."  see also hirsute.
     
        the adjective "long-haired" is well-attested to have been in
        slang use among scientists and engineers during the early
        1950s; it was equivalent to modern "hairy" and was very likely
        ancestral to the hackish use.  in fact the noun "long-hair"
        was at the time used to describe a hairy person.  both senses
        probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a
        signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish
        "hairy" as a sort of stunted mutant relic.
     
        4.  hairy ball.
     
        jargon file
     
        2001-03-29
     
     
see also:
dwim hirsute hairy ball jargon file 

Hairy >> H Words
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