I suppose there may be a few people out there who have encountered people they considered to be bigwigs or phony or perhaps phony bigwigs. The etymologies of these words are shown below.
Bigwig:
The English word “bigwig” is obviously a combination of “big” and “wig.” It turns out that “wig” is a shortened form of “periwig” which is really a variation of “perwike” which is a defunct variation of “peruke” which came into English from the French “perruque” and the Italian “perrucca.” French and Italian are Latin-based languages, which means that the French and Italian words are from the Latin “pilus” means “hair.” In other words, the underlying meaning of the English, French, and Italian words is “hair”
With regard to the origins of “big”, John Ayto, in his Dictionary of Word Origins, writes:
“Big is one of the notorious mystery words of English etymology—extremely common in the modern language, but of highly dubious origin.”
Geographically, “big” seems to diffuse from the north, suggesting that it may have a Norse origin, perhaps related to the Norwegian “bugge” meaning “important man.”
Now comes the really important question: How did “bigwig” come to describe an important, powerful, and/or wealthy person. Andrew Lock and Kim Symes, writing in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, explain what happened:
“…Elizabeth I of England and Henry III of France both took to wearing wigs because of the paucity of their own hair. Hence wigs became symbols of status that could be imitated by others. Over the following few centuries wigs became increasingly larger and more elaborate (and because of their expense, the most prestigious wigs could only be afforded by wealthy nobles; hence the origin of the term ‘bigwig’ for persons of high status.)”
Chrysti the Woodsmith (Chrysti M. Smith), in her
Verbivore’s Feast: Second Course, reports it this way:
“Fashioned from locks of human hair and sewn, curled, and powdered by wigmakers, a man’s peruke (as it was sometimes called) was an indicator of his social status. The more important the man, the more elaborate the headgear.”
Phony:
Tracing the origins of “phony” takes us to New York City in the late nineteenth century. Here we find an interesting swindler—he is named Forney in some accounts and Fawney in others—who specialized in fake jewelry. In some accounts he was making brass rings which looked like gold. These rings were then sold to hucksters by the barrelful who sold them on the street to unsuspecting customers.
In some accounts, our swindler was involved with selling “painted” diamonds. He would take cheap stones, then “doctor” them to look brilliant, and have his confederates sell them to pawnbrokers.
In either case (and perhaps both are true), Forney or Fawney became “phony.” Originally, “phony” was an adjective which referred to jewelry, but by 1902 it is recorded as a noun for a person or a thing.