headlong

UK/ˈhɛd.lɒŋ/US/ˈhɛd.lɔŋ/

adverbC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,310 of 15,258neutral

Headlong means rushing forward without stopping to think. Rush headlong, fall headlong, headlong into it.

It carries both speed and imprudence, which is why it is almost never neutral — going headlong into something is a criticism. The literal sense is head first. Note that the -long is not the word long: it is an old adverbial ending that was reshaped to look like one, as in sidelong.

Definitions of headlong

1adverbheadlongRushing forward without stopping to think.C1
“He jumped headlong into marriage after knowing her for only a month.”

headlong is a manner of rushing.

Where it comes from

Middle English hedlong alters an older hedling, whose ending was an adverbial one. It was reshaped to look like long.

Middle English
hedlong
English, today
headlong

Built from

hevedlynge · Middle English — headlong

From Middle English hedlong, alteration of hedling, heedling, hevedlynge (“headlong”), assimilated to long. More at headling.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

headlong in the wild

A loud passage brings in the familiar 1st waltz theme again before the waltz rushes headlong into its brilliant and exciting close.
Leitartikel
However, Kansuke never lived to see his plan succeed; thinking it to have failed, he charged headlong into the enemy ranks, dying in battle.
Yamamoto Kansuke (general)
At first I imagined he had lost his footing, and was falling headlong into one of the yawning gulfs.
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth· Jules Verne

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.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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