"toke the wild hair"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

I doubt that there is any marijuana reference here.

I still like "toke" = "took". Google search for "I toke the" turns up >100
hits where "toke" clearly means "took" ("toke the photo", "toke the
course", "toke the train", etc. etc.); only a few where "toke" = "smoke"!
Some of the items appear to be written by Germans, Swedes, Hollanders, etc.
("Toke" apparently was commonly written for "took" in Middle English, BTW.)

If one desires a foreign word, French "toqué" = "crazy"/"infatuated" fits
fine. Or Spanish "tocar"/"toque" = "touch" (verb/noun) (probably the
ancestor of the Marijuana "toke" BTW), "tocado" = "crazy". (Cf. English
"smitten", "touched".)

But I think "wild hair" here is clearly English slang, and virtually
identical (in the sense "wild impulse/notion/whim") to a conventional usage
in general US English slang, so I prefer "toke" to be English too, even if
it's nonstandard/erroneous English ("toke the wild hair" = "took the wild
hair" in place of "got a wild hair" seems to me to be a natural for one
who's not a native Anglophone). As I said before, the origin of "wild hair"
in this sense is mysterious to me, and perhaps it was indeed once "wild
hare" or so.

-- Doug Wilson