beheading
/bɪˈhɛˌdɪŋ/
beheading is the present participle and gerund of behead.
Meaning of behead
Verb
behead (third-person singular simple present beheads, present participle beheading, simple past and past participle beheaded)
- To deliberately remove the head of; to cut off (someone's) head.
- “For a while it was hand-to-hand between us,
then blood went curling along the currents
and I beheaded Grendel's mother in the hall
with a mighty sword.”]1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 68
- Synonyms:
- decapitate, decollate
- “For a while it was hand-to-hand between us,
Noun
beheading (countable and uncountable, plural beheadings)
- An instance of a person being beheaded.
- A large crowd gathered to see the beheading.
- The guillotine was meant to humanize beheadings, but allowed the French Revolution to execute people at an industrial rate.
- Synonyms:
- decapitation, decollation
Synonyms of beheading
Forms of beheading
| plural | beheadings |
|---|
Origin of beheading
From behead + -ing.
Questions about beheading
- What does beheading mean?
- Beheading means an instance of a person being beheaded.
- What is beheading the present participle and gerund of?
- Beheading is the present participle and gerund of behead.
- What part of speech is beheading?
- Beheading is a noun.
- How do you pronounce beheading?
- Beheading is pronounced /bɪˈhɛˌdɪŋ/.
- What is the plural of beheading?
- The plural of beheading is beheadings.
Words near beheading in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: beheading (page history and authors); behead (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-beheading.wav.
Cite this entry: “beheading.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beheading. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.