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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

headsman.

A chief person; a head man

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun
  1. A chief person; a head man

    Scotland · obsolete
  2. An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.

  3. A labourer in a colliery who transports the coal from the workings to the horseway, and who is oftentimes assisted by a younger worker called a foal.

    historical
  4. One in command of a whaling vessel.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English heddysman, equivalent to head + -s- + -man. Cognate with Scots hedisman, heidisman (“head man; chief; commander”). Compare also Danish høvedsmand (“captain”), Swedish hövitsman (“captain”), Icelandic höfuðsmaður (“captain”), German Hauptmann (“captain”).

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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.