Word.ws English Dictionary

headbobbing

headbobbing noun: a stereotypic animal behaviour in which the head bobs up and down.

Noun

headbobbing (uncountable)

  1. A stereotypic animal behaviour in which the head bobs up and down.
    • A distinctive feature of the guinea pig's response to conspecific odors (particularly of the male's response to female urine odors) is a behavior we have called headbobbing.1983, Robert Milton Silverstein, Dietland Müller-Schwarze, Chemical signals in vertebrates, volume 3
    • Cocaine induces a wide range of behaviors in rats, such as hyperlocomotion, excessive exploratory behavior, focused sniffing, headbobbing, as well as other repetitive purposeless behaviors.2006, Monica Lisa Berlanga, Cholinergic Interneurons and Synaptic Reorganization within the Nucleus Accumbens Shell and Core

Origin of headbobbing

From head + bobbing.

Questions about headbobbing

What does headbobbing mean?
Headbobbing means a stereotypic animal behaviour in which the head bobs up and down.
What part of speech is headbobbing?
Headbobbing is a noun.

Words near headbobbing in the dictionary

  1. headblocks
  2. headboard
  3. headboarded
  4. headboardless
  5. headboards
  6. headbobbing
  7. headbolt
  8. headbolt heater
  9. headbolt heaters
  10. headbolts
  11. headbonk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headbobbing (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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