headhouse
headhouse noun: the portion of a passenger railway terminal not housing the tracks and platforms, comprising ticket counters, baggage facilities, etc.
Noun
headhouse (plural headhouses)
- The portion of a passenger railway terminal not housing the tracks and platforms, comprising ticket counters, baggage facilities, etc.
- Several members cast it as an either-or issue, pitting the form of the headhouse against the function of the passageway.2007 January 8, William Neuman, “Planners Clash Over Transit Hub, and Riders Win”, in New York Times
- The overground portion of a subway station.
- A structure built at the top of a ventilation shaft or mineshaft.
- HS2 Ltd has unveiled the final design for the Little Missenden ventilation shaft headhouse on the ten-mile-long Chilterns Tunnel. Its single-storey design is said to have been inspired by barns and historic agricultural buildings in the area. [...] The headhouse will sit above a ventilation shaft...2020 December 2, “Network News: Vent shaft design revealed”, in Rail, page 19
Forms of headhouse
| plural | headhouses |
|---|---|
| alternative form | head house |
Origin of headhouse
From head + house.
Questions about headhouse
- What does headhouse mean?
- Headhouse means the portion of a passenger railway terminal not housing the tracks and platforms, comprising ticket counters, baggage facilities, etc.
- What part of speech is headhouse?
- Headhouse is a noun.
- What is the plural of headhouse?
- The plural of headhouse is headhouses.
Words near headhouse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: headhouse (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: “headhouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/headhouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.