head

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The uppermost or forwardmost part of the body of a vertebrate, containing the brain and the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and jaws.
2. n. The analogous part of an invertebrate organism.
3. n. The length or height of such a part: The horse lost by a head. She is two heads taller than he is.
4. n. The seat of the faculty of reason; intelligence, intellect, or mind: I did the figuring in my head.
5. n. Mental ability or aptitude: She has a good head for mathematics.
6. n. Freedom of choice or action: Give the child his head and see how well he solves the problems.
7. n. Slang A habitual drug user. Often used in combination: a dopehead.
8. n. Slang An enthusiast. Often used in combination: a chilihead.
9. n. A person considered foolish or contemptible. Often used in combination: a chowderhead.
10. n. A portrait or representation of a person's head.
11. n. The side of a coin having the principal design, often of the head of a famous person, and the date. Often used in the plural with a singular verb.
12. n. Informal A headache: had a bad head early this morning.
13. n. An individual; a person: charged five dollars a head.
14. n. A single animal: 20 head of cattle.
15. n. A person who leads, rules, or is in charge; a leader, chief, or director: the head of the corporation.
16. n. A headmaster or headmistress.
17. n. The foremost or leading position: marched at the head of the parade.
18. n. A headwaiter.
19. n. The difference in depth of a liquid at two given points.
20. n. The measure of pressure at the lower point expressed in terms of this difference.
21. n. The pressure exerted by a liquid or gas: a head of steam.
22. n. The liquid or gas exerting the pressure.
23. n. The froth or foam that rises to the top in pouring an effervescent liquid, such as beer.
24. n. The tip of an abscess, boil, or pimple, in which pus forms.
25. n. A turning point; a crisis: bring matters to a head. See Synonyms at crisis.
26. n. A projection, weight, or fixture at the end of an elongated object: the head of a pin; a head of land overlooking the harbor.
27. n. The working end of a tool or implement: the head of a hammer.
28. n. The part of an explosive device that carries the explosive; a warhead.
29. n. The part of a stringed instrument where the strings are wound; a tuning head.
30. n. A tuning machine.
31. n. Anatomy The rounded proximal end of a long bone: the head of the femur.
32. n. Anatomy The end of a muscle that is attached to the less movable part of the skeleton.
33. n. An attachment to or part of a machine that holds or contains the operative device.
34. n. The magnetic head of a tape recorder or VCR.
35. n. The device in a magnetic disk or tape drive that enables it to read data from and write data to the disk or tape.
36. n. A rounded compact mass, as of leaves or buds: a head of cabbage.
37. n. Botany A flower head.
38. n. The uppermost part; the top: Place the appropriate name at the head of each column.
39. n. The end considered the most important: sat at the head of the table.
40. n. Either end of an object, such as a drum, whose two ends are interchangeable.
41. n. Nautical The forward part of a vessel.
42. n. Nautical The top part or upper edge of a sail.
43. n. A toilet, especially on a ship.
44. n. A passage or gallery in a coal mine.
45. n. Printing The top of a book or page.
46. n. Printing A headline or heading.
47. n. Printing A distinct topic or category: under the head of recent Spanish history.
48. n. Headway; progress.
49. n. Linguistics The word in a construction that has the same grammatical function as the construction as a whole and that determines relationships of concord to other parts of the construction or sentence in which the construction occurs.
50. n. Vulgar Slang Oral sex.
51. adj. Of, relating to, or intended for the head. Often used in combination: headshaking; headwrap.
52. adj. Foremost in rank or importance: the head librarian.
53. adj. Placed at the top or the front: the head name on the list.
54. adj. Slang Of, relating to, or for drugs or drug users.
55. v. To be in charge of; lead: The minister headed the committee.
56. v. To be in the first or foremost position of: Collins heads the list of job candidates.
57. v. To aim, point, or turn in a certain direction: headed the team of horses up the hill.
58. v. To remove the head or top of.
59. v. Sports To hit (a soccer ball) in the air with one's head.
60. v. To provide with a head: head each column with a number; headed the flagpole with a golden ball.
61. v. To proceed or go in a certain direction: head for town.
62. v. To form a head, as lettuce or cabbage.
63. v. To originate, as a stream or river; rise.
64. head off To block the progress or completion of; intercept: Try to head him off before he gets home. The town headed off the attempt to build another mall.
65. idiom. have a big To be overly self-confident or conceited.
66. idiom. head and shoulders above Far superior to: head and shoulders above her colleagues in analytical capability.
67. idiom. head over heels Rolling, as in a somersault: tripped and fell head over heels.
68. idiom. head over heels Completely; hopelessly: head over heels in love.
69. idiom. keep (one's) head To remain calm; remain in control of oneself.
70. idiom. lose (one's) head To lose one's poise or self-control.
71. idiom. off Insane; crazy.
72. idiom. on (one's) head As one's responsibility or fault: If this project fails, it's on your head.
73. idiom. over (one's) head Beyond one's comprehension.
74. idiom. over (one's) head Beyond one's financial means.
75. idiom. put heads together To consult and plan together: Let's put our heads together and solve this problem.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The upper part or division of the human body, consisting of the more or less rounded skull and its integuments and contents, the organs of sight, hearing, taste, etc., with the mouth and its parts, and joined to the trunk by the neck; in an extended sense, the corresponding part of any animal's body; the front, fore, or top part or oral end of an animal, in any way distinguished from the rest of the body, as by being borne upon a neck; the end opposite the tail. In all vertebrates except the lancelets, which have no skull or brain, the head is a prominent part. In arthropods, as insects and crustaceans, the head is an anterior part of the body in some way distinguished from the thorax, as by the coalescence of a number of the primitively distinct somites of the body into one segment, and the conversion of the appendages of these confluent somites into mouth-parts and organs of special sense; though the outward separation between head and thorax is often obscure or null. (See cephalothorax.) In the great group of worms, or anarthropodous anneloid animals, the head is simply the oral as opposed to the aboral end of the body. In molluscous animals a head is frequently recognizable by its mouth, tentacles, etc.; but in many there is no such distinction, these being called in consequence acephalous or headless. Still lower in the scale, the term head can be applied only, if at all, to the oral end of an animal. (See cranium and skull.) In certain Vermes the head is the whole mature individual excepting its generative buds, joints, or strobila: as, the head of a tapeworm.
2. n. Mental faculty regarded as seated in the head; intelligence; understanding; will or resolution; inclination; mind.
3. n. An individual animal or person; especially, an animal or a person considered as merely one of a number: as, to charge so much a head.
4. n. One who has the first rank or place, and to whom others are subordinate; a principal person; a leader; a chief: as, the head of an army; the head of a sect or party.
5. n. A conspicuous external covering or prominence on the head. The covering of hair: as, a beautiful head of hair.
6. n. The antlers of a deer.
7. n. A part of a thing regarded as in some degree resembling the human head in position, form, or importance. The top, especially when distinguished in some way from the rest of the thing: as, the head of a pin, of a spear, of a nail, of a mast.
8. n. The top or upper part of a plant the leaves of which form a single more or less compact mass: as, a head of grain or of lettuce.
9. n. In botany, a more or less globular cluster of sessile or nearly sessile flowers centripetal in development, as in the plane-tree, button-bush, clover, etc. By the shortening of the rays the umbel becomes a head, as in Eryngium, Sanicula, etc. In the Compositæ the flowers are always collected into a head, but they are then situated on a conical, flat, or even concave receptacle. Gray calls such a head the anthodium, from the resemblance of the whole head to a single flower. In the Characeæ Sachs applies the term head (köpfchen) to a peculiar hyaline cell situated at the central end of each of the eight manubria. See head-cell, and cut under anthoclinium.
10. n. The main point or part; that which constitutes the most conspicuous or most important feature.
11. n. The fore part; hence, the foremost place; the most prominent or honorable position: as, the head of a ship (which includes the bows on both sides); the head of a procession, of a column of troops, or of a class; the head of the table; the head of a profession.
12. n. That end of a thing which is regarded as the upper end: as, the head of a bed; the head of a street.
13. n. Of a barrel or the like, either end when closed; hence, the material with which either end is closed: as, to knock out both heads of a cask.
14. n. That which rises to the top, as the froth on a pot of beer.
15. n. That part of an abscess or a boil where it breaks or seems likely to break: often used figuratively.
16. n. The principal source, or one of the sources, as of a stream; the remotest point from the mouth or opening into a sea or lake, as of a creek, bay, or gulf; a source or spring in general.
17. n. The accumulation of oil in oil-tubes when the pumps are idle.
18. n. A reliquary in the shape of a human head. See chef, 3.
19. n. A headland or promontory, as in the names Gay Head, Flamborough Head.
20. n. A special part of a tool, instrument, etc., having some analogy with the human head, as the upper or steel part of an anvil; the riser, sprue, or sullage-piece of a casting; the obverse of a coin; the capital of a column; the striking part of a hammer, in contradistinction to the helve, and the pole as distinguished from the claw or peen; the poppet of a lathe; the lathe-stock in which is the live spindle, as distinguished from the tail-stock, which contains the dead spindle; the top edge of a book; the top of a door, etc.
21. n. A bundle of flax measuring probably 2 feet in length, and weighing a few pounds. In Dorsetshire a head of hemp weighs 4 pounds. According to the statute of Edward I. called Tractatus de ponderibus et mensuris, a head of linen is 10 yards: “Cheef de fustiano constat ex tredecim ulnis: caput findonis ex decem ulnis.” In whaling: The upper end of a piece of blubber in boarding; the square end cut off from the main piece, and separately hauled in. That part of a whale which includes the white-horse, junk, and case, as of a sperm-whale, or the whalebone and some blubber of a baleen-whale.
22. n. In tortoise-shell manuf., the larger plates, taken collectively, of the upper shell of the caret or hawk's-bill turtle, usually thirteen in number.
23. n. In musical notation, the principal part of a note — that is, that part which indicates by its position on the staff the pitch of the tone: as, distinguished from the stem or tail. (See note.) Heads are either open, as in semibreves and minims, or solid, as in crotchets, quavers, etc.
24. n. In various stringed musical instruments of the lute and viol families, that part of the instrument above the neck where the tuning-pegs are inserted. It is usually carved ornamentally, especially in the older instruments. See lute, viol, guitar, etc.
25. n. In musical instruments of the drum family, the stretched membrane covering one or both of the ends, by striking which the tone is produced. The tension of the head and thus the pitch of the tone are governed by a ring around the edge, which may be raised or lowered, relaxing or tightening the membrane. See drum, tambourine.
26. n. In hydrostatics, the height of water above a given level, as in a pond or reservoir, considered as a measure of its quantity or force of fall: also reckoned in terms of the pressure of the water per square inch at the given level: as, a reservoir with forty feet head of water. See fall.
27. n. In pneumatics, the difference of pressure on a unit of base existing between two fluid columns of different densities communicating at their bases: estimated as the height of a column of the denser fluid whose pressure on a unit of its base is equal to the difference: as, the head which determines the velocity of flow in a chimney.
28. n. In steam- and gas-engin., the pressure of a confined volume of steam or gas upon a unit of the interior surface of a confining vessel, estimated in terms either of weight or of the height of a column of water or mercury which would exert the same pressure upon a unit of area of its base: as, a full head of steam.
29. n. A culmination or crisis; height; force; strength; pitch. Compare def. 6 .
30. n. Power; armed force.
31. n. A chief point or subject; one of a number of successive topics of discourse, or a summary thereof: as, the heads of a discourse or treatise.
32. n. A printed or written title; a heading. In printing a chapter-head is the word chapter with its number in large type; a running head, the title of a book or a chapter continuously repeated at the top of the pages; a side-head, a title inserted in the first line of a paragraph (as, for example, the title-words in this dictionary); a subhead, a second title following the main one, or the title of a minor division of a chapter or other general division.
33. n. In coal-mining: A level or road driven into the solid coal for proving or working a mine. The part of a face or breast nearest the roof. See heading, 10.
34. n. In angling, a feather or herl wound closely on the body of an artificial fly, both for ornament and to hide the butt-end of the wing where it is clipped off.
35. n. By the height of the head and shoulders; hence, by a great deal; by much; by far; greatly: as, he is head and shoulders above his fellows.
36. n. To come to a crisis or consummation. Also to draw to a head.
37. n. To resist with an opposing force; combine against.
38. n. Synonyms Commander, Leader, etc. See chief.
39. Being at the head; first or foremost; chief; principal: as, the head waters of a river; the head man of a village; a head workman.
40. Coming from in front; bearing toward the head, as of a ship: as, a head wind; a head sea.
41. [In many instances usage varies between writing head separately as an adjective and joining it by a hyphen with a noun to make a compound.]
42. To take off the head of; behead; decapitate: now rare or obsolete, except with reference to plants, fish, etc.: as, to head back a tree (that is, to prune it at the top, so as to promote lateral instead of upward growth); to head thistles; to head a fish.
43. To be or put one's self at the head of; lead; direct; act as leader of.
44. To form a head to; fit or furnish with a head: as, to head a nail or a cask.

Wiktionary

1. n. countable The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth, and main sense organs.
2. n. countable Mental or emotional aptitude or skill.
3. n. countable Mind; one's own thoughts.
4. n. countable The topmost, foremost, or leading part.
5. n. The end of a rectangular table furthest from the entrance; traditionally considered a seat of honor.
6. n. billiards The end of a pool table opposite the end where the balls have been racked.
7. n. countable The principal operative part of a simple machine or tool.
8. n. The source of a river; the end of a lake where a river flows into it.
9. n. this sense?) The front, as of a queue.
10. n. Headway; progress.
11. n. The foam that forms on top of beer or other carbonated beverages.
12. n. countable Leader; chief; mastermind.
13. n. A headmaster or headmistress.
14. n. A headache; especially one resulting from intoxication.
15. n. A clump of leaves or flowers; a capitulum.
16. n. anatomy The rounded part of a bone fitting into a depression in another bone to form a ball-and-socket joint.
17. n. An individual person.
18. n. uncountable A single animal.
19. n. The population of game.
20. n. Topic; subject.
21. n. linguistics A morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of phrase of which it is a member.
22. n. jazz The principal melody or theme of a piece.
23. n. UK, geology Deposits near the top of a geological succession.
24. n. medicine The end of an abscess where pus collects.
25. n. uncountable denouement; crisis
26. n. A machine element which reads or writes electromagnetic signals to or from a storage medium.
27. n. music The headstock of a guitar.
28. n. music A drum head, the membrane which is hit to produce sound.
29. n. engineering The end cap of a cylindrically-shaped pressure vessel.
30. n. automotive The cylinder head, a platform above the cylinders in an internal combustion engine, containing the valves and spark plugs.
31. n. A buildup of fluid pressure, often quantified as pressure head.
32. n. fluid dynamics The difference in elevation between two points in a column of fluid, and the resulting pressure of the fluid at the lower point.
33. n. fluid dynamics More generally, energy in a mass of fluid divided by its weight.
34. n. nautical The top edge of a sail.
35. n. nautical The bow of a nautical vessel.
36. n. nautical The toilet of a ship.
37. n. uncountable, slang Fellatio or cunnilingus; oral sex.
38. n. slang The glans penis.
39. n. countable, slang A heavy or habitual user of illicit drugs.
40. n. UK A headland.
41. n. computing The part of hard drives responsible for reading and writing data.
42. adj. Of, relating to, or intended for the head.
43. adj. Foremost in rank or importance.
44. adj. Placed at the top or the front.
45. adj. Coming from in front.
46. v. transitive To be in command of. (See also head up.)
47. v. transitive To strike with the head; as in soccer, to head the ball
48. v. intransitive To move in a specified direction.
49. v. fishing To remove the head from a fish.
50. v. intransitive To originate; to spring; to have its course, as a river.
51. v. intransitive To form a head.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The anterior or superior part of an animal, containing the brain, or chief ganglia of the nervous system, the mouth, and in the higher animals, the chief sensory organs; poll; cephalon.
2. n. The uppermost, foremost, or most important part of an inanimate object; such a part as may be considered to resemble the head of an animal; often, also, the larger, thicker, or heavier part or extremity, in distinction from the smaller or thinner part, or from the point or edge; ; that which covers and closes the top or the end of a hollow vessel.
3. n. The place where the head should go.
4. n. The most prominent or important member of any organized body; the chief; the leader.
5. n. The place or honor, or of command; the most important or foremost position; the front
6. n. Each one among many; an individual; -- often used in a plural sense.
7. n. The seat of the intellect; the brain; the understanding; the mental faculties
8. n. The source, fountain, spring, or beginning, as of a stream or river; ; hence, the altitude of the source, or the height of the surface, as of water, above a given place, as above an orifice at which it issues, and the pressure resulting from the height or from motion; sometimes also, the quantity in reserve; ; also, that part of a gulf or bay most remote from the outlet or the sea.
9. n. A headland; a promontory.
10. n. A separate part, or topic, of a discourse; a theme to be expanded; a subdivision.
11. n. Culminating point or crisis; hence, strength; force; height.
12. n. Power; armed force.
13. n. A headdress; a covering of the head
14. n. An ear of wheat, barley, or of one of the other small cereals.
15. n. A dense cluster of flowers, as in clover, daisies, thistles; a capitulum.
16. n. A dense, compact mass of leaves, as in a cabbage or a lettuce plant.
17. n. The antlers of a deer.
18. n. A rounded mass of foam which rises on a pot of beer or other effervescing liquor.
19. n. Tiles laid at the eaves of a house.
20. adj. Principal; chief; leading; first.
21. v. To be at the head of; to put one's self at the head of; to lead; to direct; to act as leader to.
22. v. To form a head to; to fit or furnish with a head.
23. v. obsolete To behead; to decapitate.
24. v. To cut off the top of; to lop off.
25. v. To go in front of; to get in the front of, so as to hinder or stop; to oppose; hence, to check or restrain
26. v. To set on the head.
27. v. To originate; to spring; to have its source, as a river.
28. v. To go or point in a certain direction; to tend
29. v. To form a head.