behead
Americanverb (used with object)
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to cut off the head of; kill or execute by decapitation.
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Geology. (of a pirate stream) to divert the headwaters of (a river, stream, etc.).
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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beheadsimple
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beheadssimple
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have beheadedperfect
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has beheadedperfect
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am beheadingprogressive
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are beheadingprogressive
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is beheadingprogressive
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have been beheadingperfect progressive
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has been beheadingperfect progressive
Past
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beheadedsimple
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had beheadedperfect
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was beheadingprogressive
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were beheadingprogressive
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had been beheadingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of behead
before 1000; Middle English behe ( f ) den, beheveden, Old English behēafdian. See be-, head
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In 2017, in the process of expanding his cattle shed, Morandi Bonacossi said, the farmer managed to behead one of the monumental reliefs with a bulldozer.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2022
The children learned to mend their own clothing and knew how to behead and pluck a chicken.
From New York Times ● Sep. 24, 2020
A love of puzzles is clear in the call to behead the bodyless Cheshire Cat: what, exactly, would you behead?
From Nature ● Nov. 17, 2015
In Santa Monica, Nick Banning has gone so far as to behead his beloved bobblehead collection and place the figures in his front yard in a mock baseball game.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2014
A woman was in the kitchen downstairs, about to behead a coconut with a scythe.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
There you will stand for eight hours, clad in ill-fitting rubber boots and a hooded plastic onesie, while she guts and beheads an endless stream of salmon floating by on a metal belt.
From New York Times ● Sep. 7, 2021
It would be like reducing the whole of Macbeth to the final scene where Macduff beheads the King, and therefore revealing nothing about his motivation or history.
From BBC ● Apr. 11, 2019
So he goes to the fish market to prod clams, watches in awe as a bar owner beheads a bottle with a sword, then throws together four different risottos, all beautiful.
From The Guardian ● May 5, 2010
The whiplash of the tempest cracked the tree trunks as a child beheads a row of daisies.
From The Mississippi Bubble by Hough, Emerson
Cover thy sky with vapor and clouds, O Zeus," exclaims Goethe's Prometheus, "and practise thy strength on tops of oaks and summits of mountains like the child who beheads thistles.
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13 by Rudd, John
He also referred to a 14th century predecessor who had been beheaded, adding: "I hope not literally."
From BBC ● Dec. 5, 2024
There has been no evidence that children were beheaded on Oct.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2024
They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2024
Ever since King Charles I tried to arrest lawmakers in 1642 - and ended up deposed, tried and beheaded — the monarch has been barred from entering the House of Commons.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 6, 2023
He beheaded the dried blooms of a hydrangea bush.
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
One day, as I was beheading a trout, it struck me: People will give me money if I just show up and do what they ask me to do.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
I haven’t watched the series, so I didn’t understand why we were beheading a stuffed bear, but families seemed thrilled to explore the venue, including petting Uncle Fester’s Chupacabra.
From Barron's ● Dec. 20, 2025
The letters date from 1578 to 1584, a few years before Mary's beheading 436 years ago - on 8 February, 1587.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2023
Halimi had pointed out, in court and in the media, that until 1943 a woman could, by law, have faced beheading by guillotine for having an abortion, such was the stigma around it.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2022
I am where I want to be—on a boat that will beheading be heading for The United States of America.
From "The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra's Needle" by Dan Gutman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
