Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the head.
  • adjective Located on, in, or near the head.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to the head in any way.
  • Situated or directed toward the head; connected with or constituting the front or fore part of a body or organ: opposed to caudal: as, the cephalic surface of the liver or diaphragm; the cephalic end of a vertebra; the cephalic segment of a centiped.
  • In human anatomy, the bending of the head of the embryo forward or downward upon the trunk.
  • noun A remedy for headache or other disorders in the head.
  • noun In phonetics, a so-called ‘head’ or ‘cerebral’ sound.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A medicine for headache, or other disorder in the head.
  • adjective (Anat.) Of or pertaining to the head. See the Note under anterior.
  • adjective (Anat.) the ratio of the breadth of the cranium to the length, which is taken as the standard, and equal to 100; the breadth index.
  • adjective a large vein running from the back of the head alond the arm; -- so named because the ancients used to open it for disorders of the head.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or referring to the head; headlike
  • adjective Of, or pertaining to, the cephalon

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to the head

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French céphalique, from Latin cephalicus, from Greek kephalikos, from kephalē, head; see ghebh-el- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French céphalique, from Latin cephalicus ("head"), from Ancient Greek κεφαλικός (kephalikos, "capital"), from κεφαλή (kephalē, "head").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word cephalic.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.