Kinky

a. [f. KINK sb.¹ + -Y.]

  1.  Having, or full of, kinks; closely curled or twisted: said esp. of the hair of some races.

1865.  Publ. Opin., 31 Dec., 726/1. Sambo the blubber-lipped, the crooked-shinned, the kinky-haired, the ebony-hued, was the stone rejected by the builders of the Slaveholders’ Confederacy.

1872.  ‘Mark Twain,’ Innoc. Abr., viii. 55. With heads clean-shaven, except a kinky scalp-lock back of the ear.

1885.  R. E. Colston, in Century Mag., XXIX. 644/2. The hair more kinky, yet altogether unlike the woolly headed negro of the Guinea coast.

  2.  fig. (U.S. colloq.) ‘Queer, eccentric, crotchety’ (Bartlett, Dict. Amer., 1860): cf. KINK sb.¹ 2.