Word.ws English Dictionary

headswomen

headswomen is the plural of headswoman.

Meaning of headswoman

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

Questions about headswomen

What is headswomen the plural of?
Headswomen is the plural of headswoman.

Words near headswomen in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: headswomen (page history and authors); 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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