Chapter Whittle to Wild of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Wig (A). A head. Similarly, the French call a head a binette. As “Quelle binette! ” or “Il a une drole de binette! ” M. Binet was the court wig-maker in the reign of Louis XIV. “M. Binet, qui foit les perruques du roy, demcure Rue des Petils-Champs. ” (Almanack des addresses sous Louis XIV.)

“Fleas are not lobsters, dash my wig.”
S. Butler: Hudibras.

Wig War (Anglo-Saxon). The word enters into many names of places, as Wigan in Lancashire, where Arthur is said to have routed the Saxons.

Wight (Isle of) means probably channel island. (Celtic gwy, water; gwyth, the channel.) The inhabitants used to be called Uuhtii or Gwythii, the inhabitants of the channel isle.
    According to the famous Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, the island is so called from Wihtgar, great grandson of King Cerdic, who conquered it. All eponymic names- that is, names of persons, like the names of places, are more fit for fable than history: as Cissa, to account for Cissanceaster (Chichester); Horsa to account for Horsted; Hengist to account for Hengistbury; Brutus to account for Britain; and so on.

Wigwam' An Indian hut (America). The Knisteneaux word is wigwaum, and the Algonquin wekou-om- ut, contracted into wekouom (ou = w, as in French), whence wekwom.

Wild (Jonathan), the detective, born at Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire. He brought to the gallows thirty- five highwaymen, twenty-two housebreakers, and ten returned convicts. He was himself hanged at Tyburn for housebreaking “amidst the execrations of an enraged populace, who pelted him with stones to the last moment of his existence.” (1682-1725.) Fielding has a novel entitled Jonathan Wild.