Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A word, phrase, or name, usually set in boldface or other distinctive type, that serves as the heading for an entry in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or similar reference work. Also called entry word.
- n. Grammar A word that may be modified by an adjunct.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A word put as a title (and printed usually in a distinctive type) at the head of a paragraph, as the words in full-face at the beginning of the several articles in this dictionary; a title-word; a word constituting a heading or a side-head.
Wiktionary
- n. a word used as the title of a section, particularly in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or thesaurus
- n. grammar any word which may be modified by an adjunct
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. a word that is qualified by a modifier.
- n. a word placed at the beginning of a line, paragraph, or short article (as in a dictionary or encyclopedia entry); the word which forms the title of an entry in a dictionary.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a content word that can be qualified by a modifier
- n. (grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent
- n. a word placed at the beginning of a line or paragraph (as in a dictionary entry)
- n. a content word that can be qualified by a modifier
Etymologies
- From head + word. Compare West Frisian haadwurd ("noun, substantive, headword"), Dutch hoofdwoord ("headword"), German Hauptwort ("noun, substantive, headword"), Swedish huvudord ("headword, keyword"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Each headword is listed with its translation, part of speech, and pronunciation.”
Barron’s Spanish-English Pocket Bilingual Dictionary « Books « Literacy News
“The Random House Dictionary text was keyboarded after writing and each entry was divided and entered in fields assigned to different levels of information for example headword, pronunciation, definitions, etc.”
“COD6 conventions replace the repeated headword with a swung dash – arguably satisfactory if the rest of the phrase retains its typographical coding to reveal its status.”
Not Just a Pretty Face: The Contribution of Typography to Lexicography
“Problems arose when a word had two different statuses in the entry structure, for example if it were both part of a phrase and also a cross reference; of if it was a repeat of the headword and part of a phrase.”
Not Just a Pretty Face: The Contribution of Typography to Lexicography
“After reading the original post in which Kirsty employed the term "revert" I consulted my Concise Oxford English Dictionary (the standard everyday authority on the English language), but could not find a single entry (under the relevant headword) defining "revert" in the sense claimed by Kirsty to be the genuine one.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“Sub-editors sorted each headword into various parts of speech, and more senior editor-sorters would determine subtle shades of meaning from the quotations at hand.”
“So they thought up the idea of making an entry that had all the possible complications that had been causing them problems, and tested all the new releases against that headword.”
“When a headword is misspelled, things have come to a pretty pass:EPHETIC a.”
“So, contrary to general practice except in learner's dictionaries, they decided to supply an Australian pronunciation, with variants, for every headword entry, using a suitable version of the International Phonetic Alphabet.”
“SOED which is, I allow, wrong often enough has it as an adjective with its own headword entry, though its status is a little compromised:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘headword’.
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INTERP - terminology management terms
Terms from the fields of terminology, lexicography, lexicology and corpus linguistics
reworder, rewording, parser, parsing, tagger, tagging, aligner, aligning, content analysis, content analyzer, corpus management, glossary and 546 more...
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some words
phatic, macerate, amanuenses, theophagy, seraglio, gloaming, geophagy, metaphone, anastrophe, neologism, tetragrammaton, bête noire and 568 more...
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vinyl's Words
deliverator, finna, metric fuckton, fag, hyphy, ginormous, sacrilicious, fantabulous, macaca, n-word, pterodactyl, genious and 560 more...
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What Keeps Your Ears Apart?
A sort of stuffie of words/phrases that include "head"
head of cattle, out of one's head, head of the stairs, come to a head, head of steam, head of the page, win by a head, head taller, headway, fountainhead, heads or tails, hit the nail on t... and 143 more...
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Dictionary Terms
The interesting ones. :)
polyglossary, e-dictionary, ghost word, vocabulist, lexicographer, verbarian, pronunciation, etymologist, neologian, definition, fictionary, neologist and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for headword.
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