Word.ws English Dictionary

butting heads

butting heads is the present participle and gerund of butt heads.

Meaning of butt heads

Verb

butt heads (third-person singular simple present butts heads, present participle butting heads, simple past and past participle butted heads)

  1. (idiomatic) To argue uncompromisingly.
    • They always seem to butt heads when they end up talking about politics.
  2. To struggle against something that does not give way.
    • For long spells, City butted their heads against Chelsea’s well-organised lines and the upshot was the end of their push to complete a treble.2021 May 29, David Hytner, “Chelsea win Champions League after Kai Havertz stuns Manchester City”, in The Guardian

Questions about butting heads

What is butting heads the present participle and gerund of?
Butting heads is the present participle and gerund of butt heads.

Words near butting heads in the dictionary

  1. Buttigieg
  2. buttillaries
  3. buttillary
  4. buttin'
  5. butting
  6. butting heads
  7. butting in
  8. butting out
  9. butting up
  10. buttings
  11. Buttington

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butting heads (page history and authors); butt heads (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:

Cite this entry: “butting heads.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butting_heads. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.