Word.ws English Dictionary

headly

headly adjective: chief; principal; capital; (of sins) deadly.

Adjective

headly (comparative more headly, superlative most headly)

  1. (archaic) Chief; principal; capital; (of sins) deadly.
    • O'er blows the filthy and contagious clouds / Of headly murther, spoil, and villainy.1623, Shakespeare, King Henry V.
  2. (archaic) Heady; violent; impetuous.

Forms of headly

comparativemore headly
superlativemost headly

Origin of headly

From Middle English hedly, havedlich, from Old English hēafodlīċ (“at the top, principal, capital, deadly”), equivalent to head + -ly. Cognate with West Frisian haadlik, Dutch hoofdelijk, Middle Low German hö̂vetlī̂k, Middle High German houbetlich (archaic German hauptlich). Piecewise doublet of chefly and chiefly.

Questions about headly

What does headly mean?
Headly means chief; principal; capital; (of sins) deadly.
What part of speech is headly?
Headly is an adjective.

Words near headly in the dictionary

  1. headlongness
  2. headlongs
  3. headloss
  4. headlosses
  5. headlouse
  6. headly
  7. headman
  8. headmanship
  9. headmanships
  10. headmark
  11. headmarks

Source and license

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