Monday, April 07, 2008

?-heads

I read Richard Price's Clockers (1992) on a long car trip last weekend, and the recurrent use of the word "pipehead" to refer to addicts set me to wondering: just how many different kinds of "-head" are there?

Below is a quick list I came up with while running today; degrees of offensiveness vary.
Knucklehead
Blockhead
Dickhead
Lunkhead
Squarehead
Pothead
Smackhead
Crackhead
Chucklehead
Chowderhead
Cheesehead
No way that's even close to all of them. Additions?

11 comments:

  1. Bands: Lemonheads, Portishead. Gearhead is one I hear a lot round the triathlon situation!

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  2. Butthead. Deadhead. Parrothead (devotee of Jimmy Buffett).

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  3. Anonymous8:02 AM

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    aly

    ReplyDelete
  4. This sad piece has "game head":

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/nyregion/08student.html?scp=1&sq=Columbia&st=nyt

    Also: "Rivethead"

    http://www.amazon.com/Rivethead-Tales-Assembly-Ben-Hamper/dp/0446394009

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  5. Metalhead
    Shithead
    Hophead

    (I think I need to keep better company...)

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  6. Oh, you guys are good! Thanks for the help.

    I can't believe I forgot Parrothead, given that my wonderful sister-in-law suffers from that affliction. And my forgetting of Hooplehead just shows that it's long past time to rewatch Deadwood.

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  7. In Scotland we have DUNDERHEID, which means the same as most of them. I don't quite know the derivation though. Also BAW-HEID, which translates from the Scots tongue as "ball-head", which means the same as most of them.

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  8. I forgot two from the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man is frequently referred to as Webhead, while Daredevil carries the name Hornhead.

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  9. Opening an article on Martin Amis's seemingly terrible new book of essays on life post-9/11 in the New York Times the other day, Michiko Kakutani described the essays as "chuckleheaded."

    I think she's got the wrong word, and I'm surprised her editor didn't change it. Merriam-Websters defines the word as "blockheaded", or stupid. Amis may be ill-informed, or even ignorant to the point of being racist, but stupid?

    Maybe "woolly-headed" would have been better?

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