Word.ws English Dictionary

headsman

headsman noun: a chief person; a head man.

Noun

headsman (plural headsmen)

  1. (Scotland, obsolete) A chief person; a head man
  2. An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.
    • And of those base-minded jesters or buffons, some have beene seene, that even at the point of death would never leave their jesting and scoffing. He whom the heads-man threw off from the Gallowes cried out, ‘Row the Gally,’ which was his ordinarie by-word.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 40, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • And made him Headsman, for we said, / "Who's next to be decapited / Cannot cut off another's head / Until he's cut his own off[…]"1885, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert; Arthur Sullivan, composer, […] The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, London: Chappel & Co., […], →OCLC
  3. (historical) A labourer in a colliery who transports the coal from the workings to the horseway, and who is oftentimes assisted by a younger worker called a foal.
  4. One in command of a whaling vessel.

headsman meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Tagalog and Arabic

headsman in Tamil

தலைவெட்டுத் தண்டனையாற்றுபவர், திமிங்கில வேட்டைக் கப்பல் தலைவர்

headsman in Urdu

جلاد

headsman in Tagalog

An executioner
mamumugot

headsman in Arabic

An executioner
جَلَّاد jallād

Synonyms of headsman

Forms of headsman

pluralheadsmen

Origin of headsman

From Middle English heddysman, equivalent to head + -s- + -man. Cognate with Scots hedisman, heidisman (“head man; chief; commander”). Compare also Danish høvedsmand (“captain”), Swedish hövitsman (“captain”), Icelandic höfuðsmaður (“captain”), German Hauptmann (“captain”).

Questions about headsman

What does headsman mean?
Headsman means a chief person; a head man.
What is headsman in Tamil?
Headsman in Tamil is தலைவெட்டுத் தண்டனையாற்றுபவர், திமிங்கில வேட்டைக் கப்பல் தலைவர். See Headsman meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is headsman?
Headsman is a noun.
What is the plural of headsman?
The plural of headsman is headsmen.

Words near headsman in the dictionary

  1. headsigns
  2. headsit
  3. headsits
  4. headslapper
  5. headslappers
  6. headsman
  7. headsmen
  8. headspace
  9. headspaced
  10. headspaces
  11. headspacing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headsman (page history and authors); headsman (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); headsman (Urdu Wiktionary) (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-headsman.wav.

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