headcount

UK/ˈhɛdˌkaʊnt/US/ˈhɛdˌkaʊnt/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,178 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: headcounts

A headcount is counting people to check nobody is missing. Do a headcount, a quick headcount, the headcount matched.

It is the first thing done at an assembly point after an evacuation, and it is the only way to know whether anybody is still inside. In business the word means the number of staff, so cutting headcount means job losses.

Definitions of headcount

1nounheadcountCounting people to check nobody is missing.B2+
“The teacher did a quick headcount before the bus left the museum.”

headcount is a count.

Where it comes from

Head plus count, from counting people by their heads.

From head + count.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Emergency & Rescue

Practise this word

headcount in the wild

Enrollment is the sum of the headcount of undergraduate and graduate students.
List of United States public university campuses by enrollment
Enrollment is counted by the 21st-day headcount, as provided to the United States Department of Education (USDoE) under the Common Data Set program.
List of United States public university campuses by enrollment
However, the growth did not continue, in 2021-22 the Indigenous student headcount remained at 1,690.
Okanagan College
In the 2001 census, the parish had a headcount of 6,846 living in 2,928 households.
Hound, Hampshire
As of 2006, it was the largest administrative agency of the state of Illinois in terms of state employee headcount, with 14,057 employees.
Illinois Department of Human Services

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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