Headswoman
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
"No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman."
- 2 a female executioner who beheads the condemned person wordnet
- 3 (obsolete) A midwife. East-Anglia
"HEADSWOMAN, s. a midwife. It would be presumptuous to pry into obstetric mysteries, to discover the origin or propriety of this denomination."
Example
More examples"No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman."
Etymology
From head + -s- + -woman.
More for "headswoman"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.