Dave Wilton has a Big List entry tracing the history of the word callow:
Callow is a word that dates back to the beginnings of the English language, but it has shifted in meaning significantly over the past eleven-hundred years. Today it means inexperienced or naive, and it often appears in the phrase callow youth. But way back when it was associated with aging, for in Old English the word calu meant bald. […] The meaning of callow remained stable through the Middle English period, but in the late sixteenth century the word began to be applied to young birds, who were unfledged, that is without feathers. […] And by the end of the seventeenth century, callow was being used to refer to young and naïve people without allusion to fledgling birds. […] This inexperienced sense would quickly overtake the bald sense, driving the latter out of the language.
I’ll add this to my stock of ammunition to be used against those who object to semantic change (my go-to example has been bead, originally ‘prayer’): “Oh, so you think callow should only mean ‘bald,’ then?”
I was wondering if it was related to Russian голый ‘naked’; Wiktionary says yes, but the OED (entry revised 2016) is more cautious:
Cognate with Middle Dutch calu, cāle (Dutch kaal), Middle Low German kale, Old High German kalo (Middle High German kal, German kahl); further etymology uncertain.
Notes
Further etymology
Perhaps < the same Indo-European base as Old Church Slavonic golŭ naked, bare, or perhaps an early borrowing into Germanic of classical Latin calvus bald (see calvity n.).
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