Headman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who serves as the leader or chief of a community or organization, often responsible for decision-making and governance tasks
2. A person who acts as the chief authority in a village or local group, guiding and managing community affairs
3. An individual recognized as the principal figure in a village or small society, overseeing its administration and leadership

Etymology: Old English speakers called a leader of a group "hēafodmann", and the word has been used in roughly its present sense for over a thousand years. It is a plain compound of "head" and "man", but it is also a close relative of the German "Hauptmann", which means "captain", and the Dutch "hoofdman", meaning "chief". Each of these words grew from the same ancient Germanic root, so the idea of the person at the top of a group is shared across the languages of northern Europe. The word has an unexpected cousin in "hetman", the title once used for the commanders of Cossack communities in Ukraine and Poland. The two came into English by different routes and took on different flavours, so they are doublets: one arrived through a sequence of Germanic and Slavic borrowings, while the other stayed closer to its English roots. Both trace back to the same notion of a head who leads.

Synonyms: leader, chief, foreman, captain, director

Antonyms: follower, subordinate, underling