Word.ws English Dictionary

headshrinker

headshrinker is the alternative form of head-shrinker.

Meaning of head-shrinker

Noun

head-shrinker (plural head-shrinkers)

  1. (slang) A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink.
    • DIESEL: In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ACTION: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived. DIESEL: So take him to a headshrinker.1957, West Side Story
  2. (literally) One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes.
    • I listened to the sculptor of Dead Dad give an interview to a European television station while he crouched by the shrunken corpse of his own creation, a huge technical advance over the headshrinkers of New Guinea.2010, Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It

Forms of headshrinker

pluralheadshrinkers

Origin of headshrinker

From head + shrinker.

Questions about headshrinker

What is headshrinker the alternative form of?
Headshrinker is the alternative form of head-shrinker.

Words near headshrinker in the dictionary

  1. headshot
  2. headshots
  3. headshotted
  4. headshotting
  5. headshrink
  6. headshrinker
  7. headshrinkers
  8. headshrinks
  9. headshunt
  10. headshunts
  11. headshy

Source and license

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