the style of wearing the hair brushed back off the forehead. Typically a pompadour is not parted, but just brushed straight up and back. The term pompadour is also a woman's hairstyle again with the hair brushed back high from the forehead, into a roll (much higher than for a man's pompadour). The term is named after a woman (Marquise de Pompadour, a mistress of France's Louis XV). The pompadour is referred to (as a man's hairstyle) in John Steinbeck's classic 1952 novel "East of Eden": He was wearing a flat-topped, narrow-brimmed hat, very stylish, and when he saw them he broke into a run and yanked off his hat and they could see that this bright hair was clipped to a short brush of a pompadour that stood straight up. (Chapter 49).