HEAD OFF • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Head off

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/hɛd ɔf/ Listen

verb

Head v. t. (past & past part. headed; pres. part. heading)

To be at the head of; to put one's self at the head of; to lead; to direct; to act as leader to; as, to head an army, an expedition, or a riot.

To form a head to; to fit or furnish with a head; as, to head a nail.

To behead; to decapitate. (Obs.)

To cut off the top of; to lop off; as, to head trees.

To go in front of; to get in the front of, so as to hinder or stop; to oppose; hence, to check or restrain; as, to head a drove of cattle; to head a person; the wind heads a ship.

To set on the head; as, to head a cask.

To head off, to intercept; to get before; as, an officer heads off a thief who is escaping. "We'll head them off at the pass."

To head up,

(a)

to close, as a cask or barrel, by fitting a head to.

(b)

To serve as the leader of; as, to head up a team of investigators.

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Etymology of 'Head off'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Head off" Quotes from Famous Books

... way pay for her, because forty dollars was a lot of money for me in them days. Why, when I got that cow she never give enough milk to wet down a salt risin', and she was as old as Methuselah. All she could do was to eat, and she et her head off. I couldn't see her starve and I couldn't sell her. I kept her for two years, and finally a butcher come along and offered me eight dollars for her and I let her go. Wasn't I mad! I never could abide any one by the name of Silas ...

— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... culpably negligent in not laying down a large stock for private consumption before the Great Drought set in. The Delorme found that out, then that his ancestral acres bordered on Long Island Sound, and finally that the Sybarite was loafing its head off. What could be more simple, she suggested, than that monsieur should ballast his private yacht with champagne on the homeward voyage, make his landfall some night in the dark of the moon, and put the stuff ashore on his own property before morning. Did he ...

— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... ownership, absolute and utter, to the point of death, may satisfy a tyrant or a slave-driver, it does not satisfy the loving heart of God. It is not real possession at all. In what sense did Nero own Paul when he shut him up in prison, and cut his head off? Does the slave-owner own the man whom he whips within an inch of his life, and who dare not do anything without his permission? Does God, in any sense that corresponds with the longing of infinite love, own the men that ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... so I'll make the size of the bundle atone for the price. If I peel you while I wait on the sap I'm that much ahead. I can spread you on drying trays in a few seconds and there you are. Howl your head off, Bel, I don't care what you have found. I wouldn't shoot anything to-day, unless the cupboard was bare and I was starvation hungry. In that case I think a man comes first, and I'd kill a squirrel or quail ...

— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... my ear for?" he moaned dismally. "Want to split my head off? Woodsy's over yonder; talkin' with a man name of Blenham. ...

— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

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