niggerhead
niggerhead noun: a bollard made from an old cannon.
Noun
niggerhead (countable and uncountable, plural niggerheads)
- A bollard made from an old cannon.
- A geode.
- A coneflower.
- A coral or stone outcrop that stands above the surface of the water.
- We were sailing swiftly along on a calm and glassy sea, past beautiful headlands and bits of scenery clothed with vivid and luxuriant green down to the water's edge; past glistening coral islands, on whose outer edges pale green billows broke on the white sandy beaches, boiling and seething as they...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 35
- Sometimes the hourglass waist of a niggerhead gave him shelter and he rested for a few moments knowing that the small froth of his air-bubbles would be hidden by the jagged knob protruding above the surface.1954, Ian Fleming, “Beau Desert”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 202
- A tussock (clump of plant material), found on the tundra.
- These plants fill the interstices between the grasses and tiny shrubs that make the outer, fuller form of the niggerhead.1912, Appalachia, volume 12, page 51
- Responsible in large part for the difficulties of movement to which the geologists referred were tussocks, still known as “niggerheads” in the 1930s. The “niggerhead,” according to Bob Marshall, “among the gifts of nature, ranks as the most cursed.[…]”1991, Peter A. Coates, The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy, page 108
- A strong black variety of chewing tobacco, usually in twisted plug form.
- Synonyms:
- nigger tobacco
- A stone, piece of gangue, or lump of coal that is of a grade with a certain size.
- The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and chimney at one end of the shop. The work came out so well that I said: "Boys, here is a great scheme—these hardheads are splendid building-material." So we advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads. The farmers...1902 January, Elbert Hubbard, quotee, “An interesting personality: Elbert Hubbard”, in The Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine, volume 32, number 3, Schlicht and Field, page 312
- The presence of "niggerheads" is of rather common occurrence in the northern area. These are nodule-like bodies of coal, varying from a few inches to a few feet in diameter, irregularly disseminated in the beds of normal coal. The "niggerheads" are harder than ordinary coal and have a smooth...1910, Investigations of Coal Fields in Colorado and New Mexico by the United States Geological Survey in 1908, U.S. Government Printing Office, page 137
- Synonyms:
- hardhead
- A term of abuse for a black person.
Examples of niggerhead in a sentence
- Landward is the almost unbroken wall of submerged reefs where the big niggerhead corals send their solid bulks up to within a fathom or two of the surface.1989, Rachel Louise Carson, Jeffrey S. Levinton, The Sea Around Us, page 135:
- Much of the land is tundra, a mass of spongy, waterlogged clumps of sphagnum moss called tussock, muskeg, hummock, or in the vernacular of old-time Alaskans “niggerheads.”2004, James Campbell, The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska's Arctic Wilderness, page 65:
- Walking on the frost-formed niggerheads is very much akin to walking across a gymnasium floor covered by thousands of glued-in-place softballs.2006, Kit Cain, Flying The Yukon's Bush, page 30:
- The work came out so well that I said: "Boys, here is a great scheme—these hardheads are splendid building-material." So we advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads.1902 January, Elbert Hubbard, quotee, “An interesting personality: Elbert Hubbard”, in The Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine...
Synonyms of niggerhead
Forms of niggerhead
| plural | niggerheads |
|---|---|
| alternative form | nigger head |
Origin of niggerhead
From nigger + head, reflecting a supposed resemblance to a black person's head.
Words formed from niggerhead
- Nigger Head
- niggerhead last
Questions about niggerhead
- What does niggerhead mean?
- Niggerhead means a bollard made from an old cannon.
- How do you use niggerhead in a sentence?
- Landward is the almost unbroken wall of submerged reefs where the big niggerhead corals send their solid bulks up to within a fathom or two of the surface.
- What part of speech is niggerhead?
- Niggerhead is a noun.
- What is the plural of niggerhead?
- The plural of niggerhead is niggerheads.
Words near niggerhead in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: niggerhead (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “niggerhead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/niggerhead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.