Deadheader
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One who removes the dead remains of blossoms from plants.
"Instead, she is a weeder, actually for enjoyment ("That's when I get some of my best thinking done"), a keen harvester of flowers for the house, and a merciless deadheader of perennials in the autumn."
- 2 A non-paying passenger.
"There's company rules against riders. I told him tonight he's gonna have a deadheader; all he wanted to know was you gonna have coffee money."
- 3 A scheduled trip to move a vehicle that has no cargo and no passengers.
"From Granite City, I think it was, we rode a deadheader to Minneapolis."
- 4 One who does not work very hard at their job.
"...were always the "infamous machine" or the "bosses' candidate" or the "payroll deadheaders and racketeers.""
- 5 A racing pigeon that will not leave when released.
"Don does this to catch "Deadheaders" - birds which circle the wrong way and won't leave the release site. By his precise records, Don can remove deadheaders by a process of elimination."
Example
More examples"Instead, she is a weeder, actually for enjoyment ("That's when I get some of my best thinking done"), a keen harvester of flowers for the house, and a merciless deadheader of perennials in the autumn."
Etymology
From deadhead + -er.
More for "deadheader"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.