Word.ws English Dictionary

headfirst

headfirst adverb: with the head in front; headlong.

Adverb

headfirst (not comparable)

  1. With the head in front; headlong.
    Antonyms:
    feet first
  2. Rashly; precipitately; without deliberation; hastily.
    • Sheffield was not going to stop being Sheffield just because he had dived headfirst into the lusts of the flesh.2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 245
    • Over the past two years, Silicon Valley’s leaders and investors — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in weapons and war — have plunged headfirst into the military industrial complex.2025 August 4, Sheera Frenkel, “The Militarization of Silicon Valley”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 05 Aug 2025

Adjective

headfirst (not comparable)

  1. With the head in front; headlong.

Examples of headfirst in a sentence

  • As I squeeze headfirst out of the sleepout, something invisible tugs at my legs.
  • With Western support, Israel is plunging headfirst into slaughter.
  • Therefore, I strongly suggest you eschew your beloved IDE for this chapter and dive headfirst into the realm of command-line programming.

All 10 example sentences with headfirst

Synonyms of headfirst

Antonyms

Origin of headfirst

From head + first.

Questions about headfirst

What does headfirst mean?
Headfirst means with the head in front; headlong.
What part of speech is headfirst?
Headfirst can be an adverb or an adjective.

Words near headfirst in the dictionary

  1. headers
  2. headfast
  3. headfasts
  4. headfire
  5. headfires
  6. headfirst
  7. headfish
  8. headfishes
  9. headfit
  10. headfits
  11. headflip

Source and license

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