The Yiddish word sheitel derives from the German scheitel, meaning “parting,” in this case, specifically “hair parting.” The German word derives from the Indo-European root *skeyt, meaning “to cut, part, separate.” That ancient root also gave us the English verb “to shed,” meaning “to cast off.” The “shed” in the English word “watershed,” meaning an area of land separating waters flowing to different rivers, may have also originally meant “the parting of hair,” echoing the German word that gave us sheitel.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word for “wig” may have a similar story. Today Hebrew uses the word peah, but this is an abbreviation of the Mishnaic phrase peah nochrit. For example, in Shabbat 6:5, the mishna states that on Shabbat a woman can go out wearing a peah nochrit. Rashi explains this as a braid of detached hair, joined to her hair so that she’ll appear to have more hair.
A peah in the Torah refers to the edge of a field that was left for the poor, or the edges of hair on the head forbidden to be shaven. So, a peah nochrit – a “foreign” (not the natural) peah – meant the area around the head where the additional hair was added.
Linguists claim that the Hebrew word peah derives from a root meaning “to cleave, split, cut off,” since the edge of a field was split from the rest. So just as sheitel comes from a root meaning “to part,” so too, does the Hebrew word peah.
