Forehead

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈfɔːhɛd/

Definitions

1. The flat area of the face above the eyebrows and below the hairline
2. The part of the human face that is located above the eyebrows and below the hairline, serving as a transition between facial and cranial features
3. The upper section of the face that lies between the eyebrows and the hairline

Etymology: The word is a plain compound: "fore" meaning the part at the front, and "head," so the forehead is literally the front of the head. Its ancestor in Old English was "forehēafod," built from "fore" and "hēafod," the ordinary word for head, and the two halves were still easy to hear as separate parts of the body's front. The second half has a long pedigree of its own. "Head" traces back through Proto-Germanic "haubudą" to a very old root meaning something like the top or summit of the body, and the same root produced words for head in Germanic relatives such as Dutch "hoofd" and German "Haupt." The form "forehead" shows up in Middle English as "forhed," and it has kept near-identical cousins across the Germanic languages, including Scots "foreheid," Dutch "voorhoofd," and German "Vorhaupt," which all mean exactly what the English word does.

Synonyms: brow, forehead area