headswoman

English

Etymology

From head +‎ -s- +‎ -woman.

Noun

headswoman (plural headswomen)

1. A female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
   • 1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, chapter 3 part 9:

     No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman.

2. (East Anglia) (obsolete) A midwife.
   • 1830, Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia‎^[1], volume II, London: J. B. Nichols and Son, page 154:

     HEADSWOMAN, s. a midwife. It would be presumptuous to pry into obstetric mysteries, to discover the origin or propriety of this denomination.