cabbage-head

Noun

cabbage-head (plural cabbage-heads)

1. Head of cabbage
   • In autumn, on this single leg, Shaped like an apple, or an egg, A bulky cabbage-head is seen; For mortals meant, to eat — I ween.1820, The Port Folio, page 95
   • In this case the longitudinal growth was arrested, and if we examine the regular cabbage-head, we find ten, fifteen, or often more leaves forming a single cycle round the stem, as in all cases of arrestation of growth — forming of a cone in the pine, for instance— the number of leaves in a cycle...2018, PROCEEDINGS OF THE Academy of Natural Sciences, page 285
2. Style of smokestack
   • Take a ride on the Eureka Springs and North Arkansas Railway, whose rolling stock includes a magnificent “cabbage-head” woodburning locomotive;2014, The Rough Guide to the USA
   • Away down the line he could see a locomotive approaching, a plume of smoke blowing back from its cabbage-head smokestack.2017, Emmett Stone, Splintered Canyon
3. Foolish person
   • Them Frenchies worn't having no cabbage-head interfering in their affairs.2012, Laurie Graham, A Humble Companion
   • What a cabbage-head she was. Anyone would have thought she was a sixteen-year-old with her first suitor, not sophisticated, in-her-third-Season Lady Emily Kenton.2012, Amanda McCabe, The Star of India
4. Type of jellyfish
   • On December 2, a small stone crab on the south jetty was seen eating a cabbage-head jellyfish, Stomolophus meleagris Agassiz, which had been stranded on the rocks by the tide.1965, Gulf Research Reports, page 296
5. Mineral formation
   • Authigenic chlorite occurs as rosette or cabbage-head aggregates associated with illite and quartz in subsurface samples deeper than 1440 m.2009, R. Worden, Sadoon Morad, Quartz Cementation in Sandstones, page 244