melonhead

Noun

melonhead (plural melonheads)

1. (US) One of a group of legendary beings, known in parts of Connecticut, Michigan, and Ohio, generally described as small humanoids with bulbous heads who occasionally emerge from hiding-places to attack people.
   • Melonheads don’t seem to have developed the knack of raising food. Rather, they survive in the woods by dining on whatever they catch--fish, frogs, bugs, moles, or roadkill. That is, between their occasional human flesh feasts. Local legend holds that people sightseeing, biking, or hiking in the...2005, Joseph A. Citro, “Fabled People and Places”, in Weird New England: Your Travel Guide to New England's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, Sterling Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 63
   • Melonhead stories appear in Michigan and Connecticut, though Ohio’s Peninsula stores are the most persistent2026 June 5, Jannette Quackenbush, “Ohio Cryptids”, in Cryptids of the Appalachian Heartland- a Little Field Guide to the Mysterious Creatures of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, 21...
2. (Australia, US, derogatory, informal) A fool or idiot.
   • Uncle Gene turned toward Dad. "Let the melonhead laugh. We'll show him, won't we, pard?"1992, P. J. Peterson, Liars, New York, N.Y. […]: Scholastic Inc., published 1994, →ISBN, page 162
   • The picture showed the group, a gurning, multichinned James looking like a melonhead in the foreground, dressed in formal evening-wear and cummerbunds. How the fuck had they got hold of those pictures? The boys looked like a cabaret band. It was bad. It was very bad.1999, Kevin Sampson, Powder: An Everyday Story of Rock 'N' Roll Folk, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 477

   Synonyms:

   alcatote, asshat, arsehole, asshole, bayard, berk, birdbrain, blither, bobchin, bonehead