Word.ws English Dictionary

headswoman

headswoman noun: a female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.

Noun

headswoman (plural headswomen)

  1. A female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
    • No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman.1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, chapter 3 part 9
  2. (East-Anglia) (obsolete) A midwife.
    • HEADSWOMAN, s. a midwife. It would be presumptuous to pry into obstetric mysteries, to discover the origin or propriety of this denomination.1830, Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia, volume II, London: J. B. Nichols and Son, page 154

Forms of headswoman

pluralheadswomen

Origin of headswoman

From head + -s- + -woman.

Questions about headswoman

What does headswoman mean?
Headswoman means a female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
What part of speech is headswoman?
Headswoman is a noun.
What is the plural of headswoman?
The plural of headswoman is headswomen.

Words near headswoman in the dictionary

  1. headstrong
  2. headstrongly
  3. headstrongness
  4. headsup
  5. headsups
  6. headswoman
  7. headswomen
  8. headteacher
  9. headteachers
  10. headterm
  11. headtire

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headswoman (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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