Loggerhead

Quick meaning: Loggerhead is a noun meaning (nautical) A post on a whaling boat used to secure the harpoon rope.

Meaning

(nautical) A post on a whaling boat used to secure the harpoon rope.

More Meanings

1. Used as the name of various animals with large heads.
2. A metal tool consisting of a long rod with a bulbous end that is made hot in a fire, then plunged into some material (such as pitch or a liquid) to melt or heat it.
3. (Midlands, dialectal, often in the plural) A thistle-like flowering plant of the genus Centaurea, particularly the common knapweed (Centaurea nigra).
4. (obsolete) A stupid person; a blockhead, a dolt.

Example Sentences

Ah, you whoreſon loggerhead, you were borne to do me ſhame.

Bolwes, loggerheads, centaurea nigra. […] Bolwes is balls, the hard round heads of the wort. Loggerheads is a name I have often heard in Oxfordshire.

[Y]ou in the mean time, you ſilly Logerhead, deſerve to have your Bones well-thraſh'd with a Fool's ſtaff, for thinking to ſtir up Kings and Princes to War by ſuch Childiſh Arguments.

Loggerheads, from the resemblance of its knobbed involucres to a weapon so called, consisting of a ball of iron at the end of a stick, the knapweed, the Clobbewed of old MSS. Centaurea nigra, L.

Word Forms

• loggerheads

Synonyms for loggerhead

Depending on context, synonyms include addle-brain, addlehead, airhead, baboon, beanbrain, beetlebrain.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include blockhead, dunderhead, knucklehead, numskull, dunce, lunkhead.

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