headsman

English

Etymology

From head’s +‎ man.

Noun

headsman (plural headsmen)

1. An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.
   • 1603, John Florio, trans. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, I.40:

     And of those base-minded jesters or buffons, some have beene seene, that even at the point of death would never leave their jesting and scoffing. He whom the heads-man threw off from the Gallowes cried out, ‘Row the Gally,’ which was his ordinarie by-word.

Anagrams

• head mans