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headland

UK/ˈhɛdlənd/US/ˈhɛdlənd/
nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,693 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: headlands

A headland is a strip of high land jutting into the sea. Round the headland, stand on the headland, a rocky headland.

It is where lighthouses go, since a headland is the first thing a ship meets and the last thing it passes. In farming the headland is a different thing: the strip at the end of a field where the plough turns.

Roger Butterfield · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of headland

  1. 1nounheadlandA strip of high land jutting into the sea.B2+

    “We walked out to the headland to watch the waves crashing on the rocks below.”

headland is a landform.

Where it comes from

Old English heafodland is head plus land, from the sense of head as the end or top of something.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *kap-

  2. Old English

    hēafodland

  3. Middle English

    hedelond

  4. English, today

    headland

Built from

  • hafudland · Old English — boundary, headland

From Middle English hedelond, hedelonde, from Old English hēafodland, hafudland (“boundary, headland”), equivalent to head + land. Eclipsed non-native Middle English chevicir (“headland”), borrowed from Old French chevecier (“head piece”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

headland in the wild

  • Cape Fear is a prominent headland jutting into the Atlantic Ocean from Bald Head Island on the coast of North Carolina in the Southeastern United States.

    Cape Fear (headland)

  • Dungeness (UK:, UK: ) is a headland on the coast of Kent, England, formed largely of a shingle beach in the form of a cuspate foreland.

    Dungeness

  • Pentire Head is a headland and peninsula on the Atlantic coast in North Cornwall, England, and is about one mile square.

    Pentire Head

  • A small offshore island named The Mouls lies off the eastern headland; the western headland is named Rumps Point.

    The Rumps

  • A headland of considerable size often is called a cape.

    Headland

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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.