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loggerheads

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Loggerheads is stubborn disagreement, and it lives inside one phrase: at loggerheads. Two sides dug in, neither moving.

You are at loggerheads with somebody, or two parties are at loggerheads over something — the council and the residents, a manager and a board. The word describes a stuck argument rather than a loud one, which is why negotiations and long-running disputes attract it. Outside that phrase it has almost no life left, though a loggerhead turtle is named for its unusually large head. The origin is disputed, and the safest thing to say is that a loggerhead was once a thick-headed person.

Definitions of loggerheads

  1. 1nounloggerheadsA state of stubborn disagreement, used in the phrase at loggerheads.C1

    “The two departments have been at loggerheads for months.”

Phrases it lives in

  • at loggerheads — in stubborn disagreement, with neither side giving way

Where it comes from

loggerhead {{multiple images |direction = vertical |image1 = Loggerhead Tales of the Cocktail.jpg

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 9 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

loggerheads in the wild

  • Young loggerheads are exploited by numerous predators; the eggs are especially vulnerable to terrestrial organisms.

    Loggerhead sea turtle

  • Commercial international trade of loggerheads or derived products is prohibited by CITES Appendix I.

    Loggerhead sea turtle

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.