Definitions

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

  • noun A word, phrase, or name, usually set in boldface or other distinctive type, that serves as the heading for an entry in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or similar reference work.
  • noun Grammar A word that may be modified by an adjunct.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A word put as a title (and printed usually in a distinctive type) at the head of a paragraph, as the words in full-face at the beginning of the several articles in this dictionary; a title-word; a word constituting a heading or a side-head.

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

  • noun a word that is qualified by a modifier.
  • noun a word placed at the beginning of a line, paragraph, or short article (as in a dictionary or encyclopedia entry); the word which forms the title of an entry in a dictionary.

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

  • noun a word used as the title of a section, particularly in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or thesaurus
  • noun grammar any word which may be modified by an adjunct

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

  • noun a content word that can be qualified by a modifier
  • noun (grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent
  • noun a word placed at the beginning of a line or paragraph (as in a dictionary entry)
  • noun a content word that can be qualified by a modifier

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From head +‎ word. Compare West Frisian haadwurd ("noun, substantive, headword"), Dutch hoofdwoord ("headword"), German Hauptwort ("noun, substantive, headword"), Swedish huvudord ("headword, keyword").

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Examples

  • Each headword is listed with its translation, part of speech, and pronunciation.

    Barron’s Spanish-English Pocket Bilingual Dictionary « Books « Literacy News 2010

  • The Random House Dictionary text was keyboarded after writing and each entry was divided and entered in fields assigned to different levels of information for example ­headword, pronunciation, definitions, etc.

    Archive 2009-01-01 Paul Luna 2009

  • Problems arose when a word had two different statuses in the entry structure, for example if it were both part of a phrase and also a cross reference; of if it was a repeat of the headword and part of a phrase.

    Not Just a Pretty Face: The Contribution of Typography to Lexicography Paul Luna 2009

  • Problems arose when a word had two different statuses in the entry structure, for example if it were both part of a phrase and also a cross reference; of if it was a repeat of the headword and part of a phrase.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Paul Luna 2009

  • COD6 conventions replace the repeated headword with a swung dash – arguably satisfactory if the rest of the phrase retains its typographical coding to reveal its status.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Paul Luna 2009

  • COD6 conventions replace the repeated headword with a swung dash – arguably satisfactory if the rest of the phrase retains its typographical coding to reveal its status.

    Not Just a Pretty Face: The Contribution of Typography to Lexicography Paul Luna 2009

  • The Random House Dictionary text was keyboarded after writing and each entry was divided and entered in fields assigned to different levels of information for example ­headword, pronunciation, definitions, etc.

    Laurence Urdang Paul Luna 2009

  • After reading the original post in which Kirsty employed the term "revert" I consulted my Concise Oxford English Dictionary (the standard everyday authority on the English language), but could not find a single entry (under the relevant headword) defining "revert" in the sense claimed by Kirsty to be the genuine one.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2008

  • Sub-editors sorted each headword into various parts of speech, and more senior editor-sorters would determine subtle shades of meaning from the quotations at hand.

    Analyzing Becky Sharp’s Trash 2008

  • So they thought up the idea of making an entry that had all the possible complications that had been causing them problems, and tested all the new releases against that headword.

    Two stories from last week - shaggy dog and dictionary jinty 2007

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