What does "headworks" mean?

Any structure at the head or diversion point of a waterway. It is smaller than a barrage and is used to divert water from a river into a canal or from a large canal into a smaller canal.

Headworks

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any structure at the head or diversion point of a waterway. It is smaller than a barrage and is used to divert water from a river into a canal or from a large canal into a smaller canal.

Example

More examples

"At the Waste Water Treatment Plant in Boulder, Colorado, technician Dan Wadas leads nervous biology students toward what he says will be the smelliest part of their tour—the headworks."

Etymology

From head + works.

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