Word.ws English Dictionary

Gateshead

/ˈɡeɪtsˌhɛd/

Gateshead proper noun: a town in Tyne and Wear, in north-east England, found upon the southern bank of the Tyne (OS grid ref NZ2562).

Proper noun

Gateshead

  1. A town in Tyne and Wear, in north-east England, found upon the southern bank of the Tyne (OS grid ref NZ2562).
    • Of this number, 64 belonged to the above district, including Newcastle, with the addition of Gateshead, which lies on the opposite bank of the Tyne, in the county of Durham; and these afforded 2.13 cases per annum, which, as the population was 213,000, gave one case for every 100,000 inhabitants.1830, John Yelloly, Sequel to a Paper on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases, and on the Concretions to Which Such Diseases Give Rise, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London...
  2. A metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear formed in 1974, with its headquarters in the town.
  3. A suburb of Newcastle in the City of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, named after the town in England.

Origin of Gateshead

From Middle English Gatesheved (c. 1190), from Old English *Gāteshēafod, from gāt (“goat”) + hēafod (“head”). First mentioned by Bede in Latin in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People as ad caput caprae (literally “at the goat's head”), meaning a headland or hill frequented by (wild) goats. Both Latin and English names may be calques of a Brythonic predecessor formed from Proto-Brythonic *gaβr, from Proto-Celtic *gabros (“goat”), and might have been the Romano-British fort of Gabrosentum.

Questions about Gateshead

What does Gateshead mean?
Gateshead means a town in Tyne and Wear, in north-east England, found upon the southern bank of the Tyne (OS grid ref NZ2562).
What part of speech is Gateshead?
Gateshead is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Gateshead?
Gateshead is pronounced /ˈɡeɪtsˌhɛd/.

Words near Gateshead in the dictionary

  1. Gates of Hercules
  2. gates of horn
  3. gates of ivory
  4. gates off
  5. Gateses
  6. Gateshead
  7. Gatesian
  8. Gateside
  9. Gatesville
  10. gatetender
  11. gatetenders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Gateshead (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.

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