A period of transition can be observed in the choice of Agatha Christie to use both the singular and the plural in her Hercule Poirot novels, many of which were written in the 1920s and 1930s. In Middlemarch by George Eliot, published in 1871, it was the modern mustache, and Arthur Conan Doyle, himself a possessor of a formidable adornment on his upper lip, used the spelling moustache in the singular, in the 1890s. Charles Dickens used mustachios in Oliver Twist in 1839. The battle between plural and singular usage wasn’t the only one being waged in the language over this word: the French-derived spelling mustaches had enduring competition from the Italian- and Spanish-derived mustachios, which was still in active use despite being ignored by the famous dictionaries. MUSTA'CHES, noun Long hair on the upper lip. Noah Webster’s entry from 1828 was strikingly similar, but without whiskers as a synonym: Indeed, the influential Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson from 1755 also connects the two terms: It may well be because of the example of whiskers that mustache was considered a plural for so long they were, after all, synonymous terms, so why not also be parallel in form as well as meaning? The entry in Boyer’s French-English dictionary from 1699 for mustaches is for the plural only, but helpfully offers a synyonym: Mustache is no longer used in this way in English, though in modern French, moustaches is still used to refer to a cat’s whiskers. Thomas Dekker, Noble Spanish Soldier, 1634 My Tuskes more stiffe than are a Cats muschatoes.
The plural use allowed for a parallel with whiskers as a way to refer the long projecting bristles growing near the mouth of a cat: William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1598 …for I must tell thee, it will please his grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio No less a writer than Shakespeare used the word in the singular (and note that excrement is here used in a now-obsolete sense meaning “outgrowth”): Richard Perceval, A dictionarie in Spanish and English, 1599 The Mustache, or that part of the beard which is on the vpper lip, vide Bigóte, Mostáchos. In another bilingual dictionary of the period, the Spanish word is presented as plural but the English word as singular: Just as there was no consensus on spelling, there was no contemporaneous agreement about whether an individual possesses two mustaches or one. John Speed, The history of Great Britaine under the conquests of ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611 …their heads shorne, and their beards shauen all but the vpper lippe, which grew with long mustaches Thomas Hariot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, 1590 …they shaue all their berde except the mustaches
One thing that is notable about these early uses is that the plural is frequently used, even when the spelling is closer to the French moustache: His crow-black muchatoes were almost half an ell from one end to the other. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, 1589
…and, now I think on't, going to the execution, a fellow met me with a muschatoes like a raven's wing The spelling of the English term was far from settled, however, and various versions of the word were used in that era: It began appearing in English contexts in the mid-1500s with various Italianate spellings such as that used in the famous Italian-English bilingual dictionary by John Florio from 1598, which shows mostaccio rendered in English as mostacho.
The English forms also showed the influence of the Spanish and French words with the same meaning, which were themselves based on the Italian word. The word, like many Renaissance fashions, began in Italy. In other words: is mustache, linguistically speaking, properly singular or plural? Such a question is the once-burning issue of whether to consider the hair grown on the upper lip of a man a singular entity or something essentially and eternally split in two by the nose (or, if you’re inclined to use the specific anatomical term for the vertical groove of the upper lip, the philtrum). Who is that mysterious mustachioed gentleman?
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