head – English noun declension

English noun forms of head

Noun: head
Singularhead
Pluralheads; head

Sample Sentences

  • Be careful when you pet that dog on the head; it may bite.
  • Afore we got to the shanty Colonel Applegate stuck his head out of the door. His temper had been getting raggeder all the time, and the sousing he got when he fell overboard had just about ripped what was left of it to ravellings. [1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 175:]
  • The company is looking for people with good heads for business.
  • He has no head for heights.
  • It's all about having a good head on your shoulders.
  • And each of a succession of teachers who tried to show me that mathematical answers were derived logically and not through some form of esoteric inspiration was forced to give up with the assurance that I had no head for figures. My father 'would read my school reports with a gloom which in other respects they scarcely warranted. His mind worked, I think, this way: no head for figures = no idea of finance = no money. [1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 25:]
  • This song keeps going through my head.
  • “Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke[…]whom the papers are making such a fuss about.” [1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court:]
  • He found whist, and gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after office) good; but he took them seriously, too, just as seriously as he took the “head” that followed after drink. [1888, Rudyard Kipling, “Thrown Away”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co.; London: W. Thacker & Co., →OCLC, page 15:]
  • "Now you have done it, Spuds," said Cripps. "You'll have an awful head on you tomorrow." [1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 117:]
  • "Mornin', Tom," he said in a husky voice. Then as the wife left the room: "Got a drop of Scotch about? I've a head on me this morning." [1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:]
  • a laced head
  • a head of hair
  • Admission is three dollars a head.
  • […] but here we are obliged to diſcloſe ſome Maxims, which Publicans hold to be the grand Myſteries of their Trade. […] And, laſtly, if any of their Gueſts call but for little, to make them pay a double Price for every Thing they have ; ſo that the Amount by the Head may be much the ſame. [1749, Henry Fielding, chapter VII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VIII, pages 196–197:]
  • 200 head of cattle and 50 head of horses
  • We have a heavy head of deer this year.
  • What does it say at the head of the page?
  • Men that I knew around Wapatomac didn't wear high, shiny plug hats, nor yeller spring overcoats, nor carry canes with ivory heads as big as a catboat's anchor, as you might say. [1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter X, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 243:]
  • During meetings, the supervisor usually sits at the head of the table.
  • Hit the nail on the head!
  • The head of the compass needle is pointing due north.
  • Tap the head of the drum for this roll.
  • The heads of your tape player need to be cleaned.
  • Pour me a fresh beer; this one has no head.
  • He never learned how to pour a glass of beer so it didn't have too much head.
  • A deep bed of this red sandstone occurs at the head of the Yen Shui valley, a few miles south of Ching-pien [translating 靖邊 /靖边 (Jìngbiān)]. [1912, Robert Sterling Clark, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908-9., T. Fisher Unwin, →OCLC, page 122:]
  • The content of a headline over a news story should be taken from the lead of the story. […] The head should give the same impression as the body of the story. [1968, Earl English, Clarence Hach, Scholastic Journalism, page 166:]
  • In this repositary, the phenomena of nature are ranged under three principal heads. [1807, George Burnett, Specimens of English Prose Writers, page 351:]
  • I'd like to speak to the head of the department.
  • Police arrested the head of the gang in a raid last night.
  • He's (the) head of a project here.
  • “I don't know how you and the ‘head,’ as you call him, will get on, but I do know that if you call my duds a ‘livery’ again there'll be trouble. It's bad enough to go around togged out like a life saver on a drill day, but I can stand that 'cause I'm paid for it. What I won't stand is to have them togs called a livery.[…]” [1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:]
  • We saw the last Campaign that an Army of Fourscore Thousand of the best Troops in Europe, with the Duke of Marlborough at the Head of them, cou'd do nothing against an Enemy that were too numerous to be assaulted in their Camps, or attack'd in their Strong Holds. [1708, Joseph Addison, The present state of the war, and the necessity of an augmentation, consider'd, page 33:]
  • At 4pm, the phone went. It was The Sun: 'We hear your daughter's been expelled for cheating at her school exams...' / She'd made a remark to a friend at the end of the German exam and had been pulled up for talking. / As they left the exam room, she muttered that the teacher was a 'twat'. He heard and flipped—a pretty stupid thing to do, knowing the kids were tired and tense after exams. Instead of dropping it, the teacher complained to the Head and Deb was carpeted. [1992 June 24, Edwina Currie, Diary:]
  • I was called into the head's office to discuss my behaviour.
  • Only true heads know this.
  • The expedition followed the river all the way to the head.
  • Give me a head of lettuce.
  • Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, […]. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better. These rarities may be new mutations, or they can be existing ones that are neutral—or are even selected against—in a wild population. A good example is mutations that disrupt seed dispersal, leaving the seeds on the heads long after they are ripe. [2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 14 Aug 2013:]
  • I've got to go to the head.
  • Heads. (Roofing.) Tiles which are laid at the eaves of a house [1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, vol. II, page 1086]
  • Holonym: phrase
  • Linguists will see that we reject some assumptions quite widely held in twentieth-century generative linguistics. The differences are sharp and explicit enough that they should provide grounds for discussion without causing confusion. For example, we do not believe subordinators (‘complementizers’) or coordinators (‘conjunctions’) are heads, and we treat every day as a noun phrase headed by day rather than a determinative phrase headed by every. […] That does not mean we are legislating a theoretical view: it is always possible to stop and ask whether certain facts about syntax are better explained under one theoretical conception rather than another. [2022, Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Brett Reynolds, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, page xvi:]
  • We are having a difficult time making head against this wind.
  • We will consider performance issues under the head of future improvements.
  • These issues are going to come to a head today.
  • Northumberland, thou Ladder wherewithall / The mounting Bullingbrooke aſcends my Throne, / The time ſhall not be many houres of age, / More then it is, ere foule ſinne, gathering head, / Shall breake into corruption […] [1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 41:]
  • The indiſpoſition which has long hung upon me, is at laſt grown to ſuch an head, that it muſt quickly make an end of me, or of itſelf. [1712 October 18, anonymous letter in The Spectator, edited by Joseph Addison, no. 513, collected in The Works of the Late Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq, Birmingham: John Baskerville, published 1761, volume IV, page 10]
  • Let the engine build up a good head of steam.
  • How much head do you have at the Glens Falls feeder dam?
  • She gave great head.
  • Danny got head last night.
  • Then I saw the more advanced narcotic addicts, who shot unbelievable doses of powerful heroin in the main line – the vein of their arms; the hysien users; chloroform sniffers, who belonged to the riff-raff element of the dope chippeys, who mingled freely with others of their kind; canned heat stiffs, paragoric hounds, laudanum fiends, and last but not least, the veronal heads. [1936, Lee Duncan, Over The Wall, Dutton:]
  • The term, "head," is, of course, not new with hippies. It has a long history among drug users generally, for whom it signified a regular, experienced user of any illegal drug—e.g., pot "head," meth "head," smack (heroin) "head." [1968, Fred Davis with Laura Munoz, “Heads and freaks: patterns and meanings of drug use among hippies”, in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, volume 9, number 2, pages 156–64:]
  • The hutch now looks like a “Turkish bath,” and the heads have their arms around one another, passing the pipe and snapping their fingers as they sing Smokey Robinson's “Tracks of My Tears” into the night. [2004, Martin Torgoff, “Next Stop is Vietnam”, in Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945–2000, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 177:]
  • My lord, my lord, the French have gathered head: [1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv], page 100:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. substratebor.?
3. Proto-Indo-European *kap-?
4. Proto-Indo-European *kap-
5. Proto-Indo-European *káput
6. Proto-Germanic *haubudą
7. Old English hēafod
8. Middle English heed
9. English head
10. From Middle English efd, had, hafd, heafd, hed, heed, hefet, heid, het, hevd, heved, hevid, hiede, hæfd, hæfedd, from Old English hēafod (“head; top; leader; origin”), from Proto-West Germanic *haubud, from Proto-Germanic *haubudą (“head”), from Proto-Indo-European *káput (“head”), from *kap- (“head; bowl, cup”).
11. The modern word comes from Old English oblique stem hēafd-; the expected Modern English outcome for hēafod would be *heaved (similar to the Middle English word). Doublet of cape, capo, caput, chef, chief, and Howth.
12. Cognates
13. Cognate with Scots heid (“head”), Yola haade, hade, heade (“head”), North Frisian Haur, hood (“head”), Saterland Frisian Haud, Hööft (“head”), West Frisian haad (“head”), Alemannic German Haupt (“head”), Dutch hoofd (“head”), German Haupt, Häupt (“head”), Vilamovian hiöet, hiöt, huöt, huø̄t (“head”), Yiddish הויפּט (hoypt, “head”), Danish hode, hoved (“head”), Elfdalian ovuð (“head”), Faroese høvd, høvur (“head”), Icelandic höfuð (“head”), Jamtish huvu (“head”), Norwegian Bokmål hode, hue (“head”), Norwegian Nynorsk haud, hauv, hove, hovu, hovud, hue, huggu, hugu, hugud, huvu, huvud (“head”), Scanian huweð (“head”), Swedish hufvud, hufwud, huve, huvud, hövve (“head”), Crimean Gothic hoef (“head”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐌱𐌹𐌳 (haubid), 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐌱𐌹𐌸 (haubiþ, “head”); also Irish and Scottish Gaelic cuach (“bowl; dome (of head)”), Welsh cawg (“basin, bowl, vessel”), Latin capud, capus, caput (“head”), Greek κεφάλι (kefáli), κεφαλή (kefalí, “head”), Central Kurdish کاپۆڵ (kapoll, “skull”), Sanskrit कपाल (kapāla, “skull; bowl”). See: Dutch Nouns 'hoofd', German Nouns 'Haupt', Faroese Nouns 'høvd', Icelandic Nouns 'höfuð', Norwegian Bokmål Nouns 'hode', Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns 'haud', Latin Nouns 'capud', Greek Nouns 'κεφάλι'.

Verbs referencing "head"

Latin Nouns caput, Norwegian Bokmål Nouns hode, German Nouns Haupt, Danish Nouns hoved, Icelandic Nouns hedd, Gothic Nouns 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐌱𐌹𐌸.