Acephalic

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Without a head. not-comparable

    "an acephalic statue"

  2. 2
    Characterized by a migraine aura without pain. dated, not-comparable
  3. 3
    Without a leader. not-comparable

    "an acephalic society"

  4. 4
    Deficient in the beginning, as a line of poetry that is missing its expected opening syllable. not-comparable

    "The acephalic pentameters yield to tetrameters with a starting dactyl or anapest […]"

  5. 5
    Lacking the first portion of the text. (of a manuscript) not-comparable

    "All the texts, with the exception of the acephalic Homiletic Fragment I, begin with a large, plain capital letter […]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
acephalousacephalousheadlessheadlessleaderless

Example

More examples

"[…] two acephalic sardines in mustard sauce are asleep in the rank darkness of their tin container."

Etymology

From a- + cephalic.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.