Headbanger
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One who dances by violently shaking the head in time to the music.
- 2 One who enjoys heavy metal (rock) music, to which this sort of dance is usually performed. broadly
- 3 A violently deranged, extreme or fanatical person; a nutcase.
- 4 A silly or eccentric person.
- 5 A political hardliner, especially an obstructive one. UK
"We would therefore paralyse ourselves for no good reason other than the propagandistic appeasement of the Daily Mail, the Sun, my noble friend Lord Hamilton and a few other headbangers in the Commons on the Conservative side."
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 A person who engages in street violence, especially in support of a political group. Northern-Ireland
"We also had a heavy crew of home-grown headbangers who were likely to get involved in any IRA - UVF battles. It would not have taken much to tip Scotland into the serial sectarian violence that was rife in Belfast and the surrounding areas."
- 7 A kind of chin-up or pull-up exercise where the head is kept in line with the bar.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"We would therefore paralyse ourselves for no good reason other than the propagandistic appeasement of the Daily Mail, the Sun, my noble friend Lord Hamilton and a few other headbangers in the Commons on the Conservative side."
Etymology
From head + banger.
Related phrases
More for "headbanger"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.