Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definitions: Figurehead |
FigureheadNoun1. A person used as a cover for some questionable activity. 2. Figure on the bow of some sailing vessels. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "figurehead" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1823. (references) |
Synonyms: FigureheadSynonyms: front (n), front man (n), nominal head (n), straw man (n). (additional references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
See also: Head of State.
A figurehead is also a carved wooden decoration found at the front of certain old-fashioned ships.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Figurehead."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Indication | Insignia; banner, banneret, bannerol; bandrol; flag, colors, streamer, standard, eagle, labarum, oriflamb, oriflamme; figurehead; ensign; pennon, pennant, pendant; burgee, blue Peter, jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, " old glory ", quarantine flag; vexillum; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Figurehead |
| English words defined with "figurehead": Hair bracket ♦ Trail boards. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Figurehead (1920) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | At anchor with a steam launch alongside, circa the 1880s. Note the sheet anchor amidships, just below the forward funnel, and this ship's distinctive 15-foot figurehead.Credit: NAVY. |  | View of the ship's bow decoration, taken while the battleship was in drydock at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, 6 January 1909. Note giltwork on the eagle figurehead and associated decorations, stockless anchors in hause pipe, stocked anchor on billboard further aft, Sailors leaning on the bow bulwark, jack at half-mast, bell mounted in front of the ship's pilothouse, and barred portholes.Credit: NAVY. |
 | Up in his loft, old Boone was busy on a figurehead.Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Annapolis, Maryland. Statue of man with quiver of arrows and partial inscription "Figurehead of U.S.S. ..." in Annapolis.Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Pakistan | On March 3, 1985, President Zia proclaimed constitutional changes designed to increase the power of the President vis-a-vis the Prime Minister (under the 1973 constitution the President had been mainly a figurehead). (references) |
Trinidad and Tobago | Trinidad and Tobago is a unitary state, with a parliamentary democracy modeled after that of the U.K. From 1962 until 1976, Trinidad and Tobago, although completely independent, acknowledged the British monarch as the figurehead chief of state. (references) | |
Nepal | A period of internal turmoil followed, heightened by Nepal's defeat in a war with the British from 1814 to 1816. Stability was restored after 1846 when the Rana family gained power, entrenched itself through hereditary prime ministers, and reduced the monarch to a figurehead. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Figurehead" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Figurehead" is used about 80 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 80 | 37,112 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
figurehead | 18 |
ship figurehead | 5 |
figurehead mermaid | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "figurehead"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | figurë e gdhendur në bash, drejtues kukull, drejtues formal. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | مسؤول صوري, تمثال في مقدمة السفينة, رئيس صوري. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | фигурант (figurant, mute, walk on, walking gentleman), мутра (dial, map, mug, pan, puss), лице (appearance, bod, countenance, face, features, front, front view, frontage, individual, kisser, map, person, persona, personage, physiognomy, puss, sentry, visage). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 傀儡 (stooge). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | loutka (doll, marionette, puppet). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | välikäsi (go-between, intermediary), bulvaani (dummy, nominee, straw man). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | figure de proue (figure head, figure-head, figurine), prête-nom, homme de paille. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | galionsfigur (figure head). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | ξόανο (fetish, statue), φανομενικόσ αρχηγόσ. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | בוב" (doll, dummy, moppet, poppet, puppet, stooge). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | orrszobor. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | boneka (doll, puppet). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | polena. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 飾り物 (decoration, ornament), 看板 (appearance, attraction, billboard, closing time, doorplate, policy, poster, sign, signboard), 置物 (object placed in tokonoma, ornament), 置き物 (object placed in tokonoma, ornament), 案山子 (scarecrow). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | おきもの (object placed in tokonoma, ornament), かざりもの (decoration, ornament), かかし (scarecrow), か"ば" (appearance, attraction, billboard, closing time, doorplate, dry plate, policy, poster, sign, signboard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | jalloo toshee, ennym (designation, epithet, name, noun, title of book). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | igureheadfay adornado. (various references) носовое украшение, номинальный начальник, марионетка (marionette). (various references) ukrasna figura na pramcu broda, nominalni vođa. (various references) testaferro (front man). (various references) galjonsfigur (front), galjonsbild, bulvan (decoy, dummy). (various references) รูปแกะสลักบนหัวเรือ. (various references) kukla (doll, Dolly, dummy, dupe, marionette, poppet, puppet, putty), gemi başı süsü. (various references) номінальний глава, прикраса на носі корабля. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "figurehead": figureheads. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "figurehead" (pronounced fi"gyerhe'd) |
| 4 | -er h e' d | copperhead, letterhead, Loggerhead. |
| 3 | -h e' d | Airhead, arrowhead, beachhead, bridgehead, bulkhead, bullhead, Deadhead, dragonhead, drumhead, egghead, flathead, Godhead, hardhead, masthead, redhead, skinhead, spearhead, steelhead, thickhead, trailhead, warhead, wellhead, Whitehead. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-e-f-g-h-i-r-u" | |
-2 letters: argufied. | |
-3 letters: figured, gaudier, hagride, headier, hedgier, refuged, refugia. | |
-4 letters: adhere, aeried, agreed, argued, deafer, dearie, defier, dragee, dreigh, driegh, edgier, faerie, faired, feared, feriae, figure, fridge, geared, guider, haired, header, hedger, hegari, hegira, heifer, heired, rediae, refuge, uredia, ureide. | |
-5 letters: adieu, aerie, afire, agree, aider, aired, argue, auger, aurei, deair, defer, dirge, eager. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-e-e-f-g-h-i-r-u" | |
+1 letter: figureheads. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)46 69 67 75 72 65 68 65 61 64 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)..-. .. --. ..- .-. . .... . .- -.. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000110 01101001 01100111 01110101 01110010 01100101 01101000 01100101 01100001 01100100 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)F i g u r e h e a d |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0046 0069 0067 0075 0072 0065 0068 0065 0061 0064 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)40757387847174716770 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Derivations | 13. Rhymes 14. Anagrams 15. Orthography 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
