Word.ws English Dictionary

headlinese

UK/ˌhɛd.laɪˈniz/

headlinese noun: the jargon used in headlines of newspapers, often with unconventional grammar driven mainly by extreme brevity as a constraint of the medium.

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

Forms of headlinese

alternative formheadline-ese

Origin of headlinese

From headline + -ese.

Questions about headlinese

What does headlinese mean?
Headlinese means the jargon used in headlines of newspapers, often with unconventional grammar driven mainly by extreme brevity as a constraint of the medium.
What part of speech is headlinese?
Headlinese is a noun.
How do you pronounce headlinese?
Headlinese is pronounced /ˌhɛd.laɪˈniz/ (UK).

Words near headlinese in the dictionary

  1. headline-grabbers
  2. headlined
  3. headliner
  4. headliners
  5. headlines
  6. headlinese
  7. headliney
  8. headling
  9. headlings
  10. headlinier
  11. headliniest

Source and license

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