pinhead
/ˈpɪn.hɛd/
pinhead noun: the head of a pin. (Frequently used in size comparisons.).
Noun (1)
pinhead (plural pinheads)
- The head of a pin. (Frequently used in size comparisons.)
- The moment the nitre was red hot, the coal, previously reduced to small pieces of the size of a pinhead, was projected in portions of one or two grains at a time…1810, Thomas Thomson, A System of Chemistry, Vol. 4, Bell & Bradfute, page 602
- Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 203
- A foolish or stupid person.
- I don't want to be a pinhead no more / I just met a nurse that I could go for1977, “Pinhead”, in Leave Home, performed by Ramones
- My daddy repairs cars driven by women who are pinheads.1990, Kindergarten Cop
- Synonyms:
- doofus, dumbbell, dunce, addle-brain, addlehead, addle pate, airhead, baboon, beanbrain, beetlebrain
- A telemark skier.
- A human head that is unusually tapered or small, often due to microcephaly, or a person with that trait. Often promoted in freak shows as "human pinheads".
- The microcephalic idiot is an unfortunate with a "pinhead," sometimes exhibited as a "what's-it" in circus side-shows, whose mental age never goes beyond that of an imbecile.1939, Amram Scheinfeld, Morton David Schweitzer, You and Heredity, Frederick A. Stokes Co., page 155
- Zip the What-Is-It was simply a Negro idiot. […] For half an hour at a time, David Belasco used to watch Zip at Coney Island. The producer insisted he saw signs of intelligence in the pinhead […]1943, Oliver Ramsay Pilat, Sodom by the Sea: An Affectionate History of Coney Island, Garden City Publishing, page 187
- A newborn cricket used as food for pets.
- A newly hatched gecko will need pretty small crickets, but you will not have to go all the way down to pinheads.1994, Raymond E. Hunziker, Leopard Geckos, Publisher, →ISBN, page 16
- Crickets can be purchased in many sizes from newborns ("pinheads") to adults.2000, Manny Rubio, Scorpions: Everything About Purchase, Care, Feeding, and Housing^(http://books.google.com/books?id=XjUwzS7emXQC&pg=PA70&dq=Rubio+newborns-(%22pinheads%22)&lr=&num=20&as_brr=0&sig=rD...
- The immature juvenile fruiting body of a mushroom prior to its gills opening.
Noun (2) capitalized: Pinhead
Pinhead (plural Pinheads)
- A member of the Provisional IRA.
Examples of pinhead in a sentence
- It is not concerned with theological disputation; he does not count angels on pinheads.
- After harvesting the first flush, clean up all the withered pinheads and debris on the surface of the block.
- The pinhead contained only a twentieth of a gramme of antilithium, but that's more than sufficient for our purposes.
Synonyms of pinhead
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of pinhead
| plural | pinheads |
|---|---|
| alternative form | pin-head |
| alternative form | pin head |
| plural | Pinheads |
Origin of pinhead
From pin + head.
So called because they sold pin-on lilies to commemorate the Easter Rising.
Words formed from pinhead
Words that rhyme with pinhead
Questions about pinhead
- What does pinhead mean?
- Pinhead means the head of a pin. (Frequently used in size comparisons.).
- What part of speech is pinhead?
- Pinhead is a noun.
- How do you pronounce pinhead?
- Pinhead is pronounced /ˈpɪn.hɛd/.
- What is the plural of pinhead?
- The plural of pinhead is pinheads.
Words near pinhead in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pinhead (page history and authors); Pinhead (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pinhead.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pinhead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pinhead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.