Word.ws English Dictionary

headbanging

headbanging noun: a type of dance associated with hard rock or heavy metal music, in which the head is shaken violently in time with music. Also the present participle and gerund of headbang.

headbanging: a type of dance associated with hard rock or heavy metal music, in which the head is shaken...
Image: X (the subject is myself), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

headbanging (uncountable)

  1. A type of dance associated with hard rock or heavy metal music, in which the head is shaken violently in time with music.
  2. (autism) The motion of striking one's head against a surface, a common stereotypy.

Adjective

headbanging (not comparable)

  1. Extremely frustrating.
    • Any work of art/propaganda is surely permitted to lie. But Stone's overreachings in JFK are head-banging. How did he get this thing past the Script Dept.?1992 February 2, Mitzel, “Clay Shaw, The Quean Network & That Kennedy Killing”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 28, page 6

Also used as

headbanging is also the present participle and gerund of headbang.

Origin of headbanging

From head + banging.

Questions about headbanging

What does headbanging mean?
Headbanging means a type of dance associated with hard rock or heavy metal music, in which the head is shaken violently in time with music.
What part of speech is headbanging?
Headbanging can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near headbanging in the dictionary

  1. headbands
  2. headbang
  3. headbanged
  4. headbanger
  5. headbangers
  6. headbanging
  7. headbangs
  8. headbin
  9. headbinding
  10. headblock
  11. headblocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headbanging (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: “headbanging.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/headbanging. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.