'Blond' or 'blonde'

This is (or so I've always understood) one of those rare English adjectives that have a masculine and a feminine form ('blond' being the masculine and 'blonde' being the feminine).

And that is indeed what it says in almost all of the dictionaries I've checked (old and new).

There is, however, one that seems to buck the trend. It lists 'blond' as the US spelling and 'blonde' as the British spelling. Well, perhaps 'blond' is used universally in the US without regard to gender, but would anyone really refer to a man as 'blonde' in British English? That can't be right, surely?

Perhaps not – at least not right now. But we look to dictionaries to tell us what's correct and what's not.

Even if this is a mistake or a misunderstanding, plenty of words have changed in spelling or even in meaning on the strength of nothing more.