hebro (n.; HEE-bro): a large, rounded, bulbous hairstyle worn by certain male Jews

For those of you unfamiliar with the hebro, you can see it sported by such colorful characters as singer Art Garfunkel:

South Park co-creator Matt Stone (in both short and long forms):

And in years past, yours truly:

This is why I feel qualified to say that the word most commonly used to describe this haircut, “jewfro,” should be denigrated at every opportunity and the vastly superior “hebro” used in its place. I don’t know how exactly how “jewfro” became common parlance. It’s a simple portmanteau of “Jew” (or “Jewish”) and “afro,” but it has nothing to recommend it aside from being sort of concise, whereas “hebro” is brilliant — simultaneously a clever pun on “Hebrew” and a crystal clear signifier. (Total deconstruction makes jokes funnier, right?)

Which is why I was so disturbed to find that Urban Dictionary (which is, if not an authoritative reference, at least a valuable corpus) had the primary definition of “hebro” as a portmanteau of “Hebrew” and “bro,” referring either to friendly fellow-Jews or to black Jews. The hebro-as-hairstyle sense was the fourth and final sense defined, and when I arrived to the page, it had four thumbs down and a big fat zero thumbs up.

This, needless to say, is bullshit. Therefore, I hereby call upon my faithful readership (both of you) to visit the Urban Dictionary entry for “hebro” and thumbs-up the hairstyle definition while thumbs-downing the others. In this way can we shape our lexicon by changing our documentation and altering perception — it’s like 1984!