wool [OE] Wool is first recorded in Old English around ad 700 and can be traced back to a root shared by Latin lana ‘wool’, found in lanolin [L19th], literally ‘oil from wool’. The first person mentioned as trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes is an attorney, or American lawyer, in the mid 19th century, which implies that the ‘wool’ referred to is a lawyer’s curly wig. The phrase may also be connected with the expression to wool someone, meaning to pull their hair or ‘wool’ as a joke or insult. Someone wild and woolly [L19th], or rough and uncouth, is so called in reference to cowboys in the Wild West who wore shaggy sheepskin garments with the wool on the outside. Woolly in the sense ‘vague or confused’ is early 19th century and draws on the idea of something woolly having a fuzzy, indistinct outline.