Word.ws English Dictionary

headwall

headwall noun: the highest cliff of a glacial cirque.

Noun

headwall (plural headwalls)

  1. The highest cliff of a glacial cirque.
  2. The steep cliff at the back of a cirque.
  3. A retaining wall at the outlet of a drain, culvert or tunnel.
    • The platforms of all stations from Shepherds Bush to Liverpool Street have been lengthened from 325 ft. to 427 ft. between tunnel headwalls, to take longer trains.1950 September, “Central London Railway Jubilee”, in Railway Magazine, page 622
    • HS2 Ltd has built a 17-metre-high headwall and reinforced the ground at what will become the south portal of the ten-mile Chiltern Tunnel, as part of preparations for the arrival next year of tunnel boring machines (TBMs).2020 August 12, “Network News: HS2 tunnel portal readied for TBMs”, in Rail, page 10
    Synonyms:
    endwall

Synonyms of headwall

Forms of headwall

pluralheadwalls

Origin of headwall

From head + wall.

Questions about headwall

What does headwall mean?
Headwall means the highest cliff of a glacial cirque.
What part of speech is headwall?
Headwall is a noun.
What is the plural of headwall?
The plural of headwall is headwalls.

Words near headwall in the dictionary

  1. headvoices
  2. headwaiter
  3. headwaiters
  4. headwaitress
  5. headwaitresses
  6. headwall
  7. headwalls
  8. headward
  9. headwards
  10. headwark
  11. headwarks

Source and license

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