deadhead.
A person either admitted to a theatrical or musical performance without charge, or paid to attend.
Meaning & usage
A person either admitted to a theatrical or musical performance without charge, or paid to attend.
An employee of a transport company, especially a pilot or flight attendant, traveling as a passenger for logistical reasons, for example to return home or travel to the next assignment.
Anyone traveling for free, without paying the expected fare.
A train or truck moved between cities with no passengers or freight, in order to make it available for service.
A person staying at a lodging, such as a hotel or boarding house, without paying rent; freeloader.
A stupid or boring person; dullard.
A tree or tree branch fixed in the bottom of a river or other navigable body of water, partially submerged or rising nearly the surface, by which boats are sometimes pierced and sunk; snag.
Driftwood.
Alternative form of Deadhead (“fan of the rock band The Grateful Dead”).
A zombie.
Where this word comes from
From dead + head. Some senses are derived from theater jargon (originally spelled dead head) for audience members admitted without paying, which probably arose in analogy to dead weight or deadwood in reference to their lack of contribution to revenue or in reference to their unenthusiastic (dead) response to performances. Perhaps even from Latin caput mortuum, alchemy term for distillation residue. As Paul Quinion writes: Similarly, the term was applied to a dull or lazy person, one who contributes nothing to an enterprise, only in the early years of the twentieth century, well after the theatrical and transport senses had become well established.
To admit to a performance without charge.
To travel as a deadhead, or non-paying passenger.
To drive an empty vehicle.
To send (a person or message) for free.
(transitive) To remove spent or dead blossoms from a plant.
If you deadhead your roses regularly, they will bloom all season.
Where this word comes from
From dead + head. Some senses are derived from theater jargon (originally spelled dead head) for audience members admitted without paying, which probably arose in analogy to dead weight or deadwood in reference to their lack of contribution to revenue or in reference to their unenthusiastic (dead) response to performances. Perhaps even from Latin caput mortuum, alchemy term for distillation residue. As Paul Quinion writes: Similarly, the term was applied to a dull or lazy person, one who contributes nothing to an enterprise, only in the early years of the twentieth century, well after the theatrical and transport senses had become well established.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.