The previous discussion was here. My conclusion was:
The stumbling block for curlies is that it is almost always part of the phrase short and curlies - indeed, it's mostly in the expression have [someone] by the short and curlies. I did see a couple of examples of curlies used by itself as a jocular word for pubic hair, but I don't think it's an established idiom. So, sorry, Pat, but I'm not persuaded it should be allowed.
I believe this dictionary includes thousands of far more obscure words with minimal authority, Alan – even some Shakespearean words should not really be included, such as "argal" (only found in Hamlet, where it occurs just once, has never been In linguistic currency and may well be a typo hallowed by repetition).
In this case we have the authority of the
Cambridge Idioms Dictionary (Second Edition, 2006) to show that this is, in fact, an established idiom. See the following citation in the online Free Dictionary:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/have+by+the+short+and+curlies. And it has, as I mentioned, appeared in a film title, which would not be likely to happen unless the idiom had some kind of currency.
The publisher's description of this volume makes it plain that it is intended to assist students of English to learn the idioms they require to understand colloquial speech in British, Australian, and American English. It seems to me to be quite inappropriate to disallow a word that has made its way into a standard learners textbook.
Further, the term has made it into a number of other online references, as shown in the following links:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/by-the-short-hairs.html (this one also cites one of Eric Partridge's dictionaries of slang); and, in some weird wonderful senses which I hadn't come across,
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=curliesThe strongest argument, though, is the inclusion of the term in the Cambridge University Press publication and I really don't think that you have a good case for excluding it.
Cheers,
Dave (frustrated ex-philologist
)