Thought to be a name for blonde children, (coming from the word used to describe flax rope); it actually is only fitting to children with hair so light, it is literally "white".
This color generally goes away between 2-5 yrs old.
Ex. I had fourchildren, all blue eyes, but only three of them were towheads.
The inevitable blonde douche bag that is often found on overseas academic trips. Has a tendency to bite his lower lip and a habit of infecting the social mannerisms of others with his own douche-baggery (douche-baggery being a term he believes he invented himself). Smokes like a chimney and habitually quotes adult cartoons in an attempt to be funny.
Person 1: "Did you see that guy over there? He knows the word for ashtray in seven different languages!"
In colonial times, families grew their own flax to make into fabric for clothing. Transforming the flax into thread was a complicated, involved process with many time-consuming steps. After the flax was harvested, it was soaked in water for several days to soften it so the inner fibers could be removed from the stalk. To separate the long, thin fibers from the shorter, coarser ones, the flax was pulled through a bed of nails or combed in a process called "towing." The shorter fibers that were extricated were of a lesser quality and were called "tow." This led to the term "towheads" to describe people, particularly children, whose hair resembled these strands.
A person with very light (almost white) blond hair, "tow" being flax or hemp fibers. Tow-headed, along with fair(-haired) and flaxen-haired, is a tradional way in the English language to refer to blond hair or lightly-colored hair, having come from its old Germanic roots (which are quite rare).
Short-hand for the word floccinaucinihilipilification, meaning the estimation of something as valueless (encountered mainly as an example of one of the longest words in the English language).