Other forms: headed, heads, heading
Your head is the top part of your body, holding the brain, the face and the senses. Nod your head, a bump on the head, over your head.
It has more figurative uses than almost any other word. A head is a leader — the head of the department, head teacher. To head somewhere is to go in that direction: head north, heading home. It means the top or front of something: the head of the table, the head of the queue. And the idioms are endless: head over heels, keep your head, off the top of my head, head start, a head for figures.
1nounheadThe top part of the body, holding the brain.~21%
“He hit his head on the beam every single time.”
2nounleaderThe leader of an organisation or group.~77%
“The head of the department was appointed from outside.”
3verbparticularTo go in a particular direction.~2%
“After lunch, we headed towards the beach.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
head is a top part, or a leader.
Old English heafod descends from a Proto-Indo-European root that also gives Latin caput — the source of capital, captain, chapter and chief. Every leader-word in English is a head-word in disguise.
Middle English
heed
English, today
head
Built from
From Middle English heed. From Middle English efd, had, hafd, heafd, hed, heed, hefet, heid, het, hevd, heved, hevid, hiede, hæfd, hæfedd, from Old English hēafod (“head; top; leader; origin”), from Proto-West Germanic haubud, from Proto-Germanic haubudą (“head”), from Proto-Indo-European káput (“head”), from kap- (“head; bowl, cup”). The modern word comes from Old English oblique stem hēafd-; the expected Modern English outcome for hēafod would be heaved (similar to the Middle English word). a doublet of cape and capo and caput and chef and chief and Howth*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA