Word.ws English Dictionary

headline-ese

headline-ese is the alternative form of headlinese.

Meaning of headlinese

Noun

headlinese (uncountable)

  1. The jargon used in headlines of newspapers, often with unconventional grammar driven mainly by extreme brevity as a constraint of the medium.
    • [Otto] Jespersen, a language professor known for his expertise in syntax and language development, stated that headlinese is not really grammatical writing.2021 May 29, Richard Nordquist, “What Is Headlinese?”, in ThoughtCo, archived from the original on 10 Dec 2021

Origin of headline-ese

From headline + -ese.

Questions about headline-ese

What is headline-ese the alternative form of?
Headline-ese is the alternative form of headlinese.

Words near headline-ese in the dictionary

  1. headlike
  2. headline
  3. headline inflation
  4. headline inflations
  5. headline style
  6. headline-ese
  7. headline-grabber
  8. headline-grabbers
  9. headlined
  10. headliner
  11. headliners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headline-ese (page history and authors); headlinese (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: “headline-ese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/headline-ese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.