Absalom is a man in the Old Testament of the Bible: the third son of David, king of Israel. Students usually meet him as a name in that story, not as a word you use for something else. The story is famous because it is sad and rather wild. Absalom was handsome, and the Bible makes a point of his long hair. He turned against his father, started a war for the throne, and died in a brutal way — his hair, or his head, caught in a tree as he rode under it, and then he was killed. David still wept for him. The name comes from Hebrew and literally means “father of peace.” Though actually, that sits uneasily on the story: this Absalom is not a peacemaker. Names like this often keep an old hope, even when the life goes another way. In English, Absalom is almost always this biblical person, or (rarely) a boy named after him. Say it AB-suh-lum, with the weight on the first part.