Word.ws English Dictionary

headman

headman noun: headmaster. Also the alternative form of head man.

Noun

headman (plural headmen)

  1. (India, informal, rare) headmaster
    • But then Nash speaks to the school headman on Josie's behalf and persuades him to admit my youngest son.1995, Evelyn Wilde Mayerson, Miami, page 203
    • The Headman and the Principal of the school have taken care that the children do not learn anything and that education does not make any progress in this region.2005, Narain Roop Sonker, Poisonous Roots, page 20
  2. An executioner who beheads people.
    • My headman cast me in a blissful swoon, His axe cut off my cares from cumbered breast.2007, Decease Release, “Decease Release”, in Robert S. Miola, editor, Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources, page 197
    • The execution was horribly botched by a clumsy headman: 'You're hurting me,' cried the victim as the executioner hacked at his neck sixteen times until he just climbed onto the unfortunate's back and sawed through his spinal column as if he was sacrificing a sheep.2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 428

Proper noun capitalized: Headman

Headman

  1. A surname.

Also used as

headman is also the alternative form of head man.

Examples of headman in a sentence

  • Teachers were in the playground and our school Headman, Mrs.2015, Piyush Arora, My Childhood Love Story, page 38:
  • Their axe was a replica of one which belonged to Magdeburg's headman —famous executioner Wilhelm Riedel.2020, Beata Gontarczyk-Krampe, Notmsparker's Second Berlin Companion:

All 14 example sentences with headman

Forms of headman

pluralheadmen

Plural of headman: headmen

Words formed from headman

Questions about headman

What does headman mean?
Headman means headmaster.
How do you use headman in a sentence?
Teachers were in the playground and our school Headman, Mrs.
What part of speech is headman?
Headman can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of headman?
The plural of headman is headmen.

Words near headman in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headman (page history and authors); Headman (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-headman.wav.

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