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Head can be a verb, a noun or an adjective.

head used as a verb:

  1. To be in command of. - see also head up
    "Who heads the board of trustees?"
  2. To strike with the head; as in soccer, to head the ball
  3. To move in a specified direction. heading towards something
    "We are going to head up North for our holiday. We will head off tomorrow. Next holiday we will head out West, or head to Chicago. Right now I need to head into town to do some shopping."
  4. To remove the head from a fish.
    "The salmon are first headed and then scaled."

Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →

head used as a noun:

  1. The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth and main sense organs.
    "Be careful when you pet that dog on the head; it may bite."
  2. Mental or emotional aptitude or skill.
    "The company is looking for somebody with a good head for business."
  3. Mind; one's own thoughts.
    "This song keeps going through my head."
  4. The topmost, foremost, or leading part.
    "What does it say on the head of the page?"
  5. The end of a rectangular table furthest from the entrance; traditionally considered a seat of honor.
    "During meetings, the supervisor usually sits at the head of the table."
  6. The end of a pool table opposite the end where the balls have been racked.
  7. The principal operative part of a machine.
  8. The end of a hammer, axe, or similar implement used for striking other objects.
  9. The end of a nail, screw, bolt or similar fastener which is opposite the point; usually blunt and relatively wide.
    "Hit the nail on the head!"
  10. The sharp end of an arrow, spear, or pointer.
    "The head of the compass needle is pointing due north."
  11. The source of a river; the end of a lake where a river flows into it.
    "The expedition followed the river all the way to the head."
  12. The front, as of a queue.
    "Because you got them all right, you can go to the head."
  13. Headway; progress.
    "We are having a difficult time making head against this wind."
  14. The foam that forms on top of beer or other carbonated beverages.
    "Pour me a fresh beer; this one has no head."
  15. The top part of a lacrosse stick that holds the ball.
  16. Leader; chief; mastermind.
    "I'd like to speak to the head of the department."
  17. A headmaster or headmistress.
    "I was called into the head's office to discuss my behaviour."
  18. A headache; especially one resulting from intoxication.
  19. A clump of leaves or flowers; a capitulum.
    "Give me a head of lettuce."
  20. The rounded part of a bone fitting into a depression in another bone to form a ball-and-socket joint.
  21. An individual person.
    "Admission is three dollars a head."
  22. A single animal.
    "200 head of cattle and 50 head of horses"
  23. the population of game
    "we have a heavy head of deer this year"
  24. Topic; subject.
    "We will consider performance issues under the head of future improvements."
  25. A morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member.
  26. The principal melody or theme of a piece.
  27. Deposits near the top of a geological succession.
  28. The end of an abscess where pus collects.
  29. denouement; crisis
    "These isses are going to come to a head today."
  30. A machine element which reads or writes electromagnetic signals to or from a storage medium.
    "The heads of your tape player need to be cleaned."
  31. The headstock of a guitar.
  32. A drum head, the membrane which is hit to produce sound.
    "Tap the head of the drum for this roll."
  33. The end cap of a cylindrically-shaped pressure vessel.
  34. The cylinder head, a platform above the cylinders in an internal combustion engine, containing the valves and spark plugs.
  35. A buildup of fluid pressure, often quantified as pressure head.
    "Let the engine build up a good head of steam."
  36. The difference in elevation between two points in a column of fluid, and the resulting pressure of the fluid at the lower point.
  37. More generally, energy in a mass of fluid divided by its weight.
  38. The top of a sail.
  39. The bow of a nautical vessel.
  40. The toilet of a ship.
    "I've got to go to the head."
  41. Fellatio or cunnilingus; oral sex
    "She gave great head."
  42. The glans penis.
  43. A heavy or habitual user of illicit drugs.
  44. a headland.

Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →

head used as an adjective:

  1. Of, relating to, or intended for the head.
  2. Foremost in rank or importance.
    "The head cook."
  3. Placed at the top or the front.
  4. Coming from in front.
    "head sea"

Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →

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What type of word is head?

As detailed above, 'head' can be a verb, a noun or an adjective. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Verb usage: Who heads the board of trustees?
  2. Verb usage: We are going to head up North for our holiday. We will head off tomorrow. Next holiday we will head out West, or head to Chicago. Right now I need to head into town to do some shopping.
  3. Verb usage: I'm fed up working for a boss. I'm going to head out on my own, set up my own business.
  4. Verb usage: The salmon are first headed and then scaled.
  5. Noun usage: Be careful when you pet that dog on the head; it may bite.
  6. Noun usage: The company is looking for somebody with a good head for business.
  7. Noun usage: He has no head for heights.
  8. Noun usage: This song keeps going through my head.
  9. Noun usage: What does it say on the head of the page?
  10. Noun usage: During meetings, the supervisor usually sits at the head of the table.
  11. Noun usage: Hit the nail on the head!
  12. Noun usage: The head of the compass needle is pointing due north.
  13. Noun usage: The expedition followed the river all the way to the head.
  14. Noun usage: Because you got them all right, you can go to the head.
  15. Noun usage: We are having a difficult time making head against this wind.
  16. Noun usage: Pour me a fresh beer; this one has no head.
  17. Noun usage: I'd like to speak to the head of the department.
  18. Noun usage: Police arrested the head of the gang in a raid last night.
  19. Noun usage: I was called into the head's office to discuss my behaviour.
  20. Noun usage: Give me a head of lettuce.
  21. Noun usage: Admission is three dollars a head.
  22. Noun usage: 200 head of cattle and 50 head of horses
  23. Noun usage: 12 head of big cattle and 14 head of branded calves
  24. Noun usage: At five years of age this head of cattle is worth perhaps $40
  25. Noun usage: a reduction in the assessment per head of sheep
  26. Noun usage: they shot 20 head of quail
  27. Noun usage: we have a heavy head of deer this year
  28. Noun usage: planting the hedges increased the head of quail and doves
  29. Noun usage: We will consider performance issues under the head of future improvements.
  30. Noun usage: These isses are going to come to a head today.
  31. Noun usage: The heads of your tape player need to be cleaned.
  32. Noun usage: Tap the head of the drum for this roll.
  33. Noun usage: Let the engine build up a good head of steam.
  34. Noun usage: I've got to go to the head.
  35. Noun usage: She gave great head.
  36. Adjective usage: The head cook.
  37. Adjective usage: head sea
  38. Adjective usage: head wind

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of head are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of head, and guess at its most common usage.

Word Type

For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).

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