Headlining

How to spell headlining

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce headlining

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does headlining mean?

1. verbPerforming as the main, top-billed act at an event.
2. adjectiveBeing the most prominent or top-billed; given the leading position.

Headlining in a sentence

• verb

  The veteran band is headlining the festival on the final night.

• adjective

  Tickets for the headlining act sold out within an hour.

• verb

  The comedian spent the summer headlining clubs across the country.

• adjective

  The festival announced its headlining performer ahead of the smaller acts.

Where does headlining come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from headline, itself a transparent compound of the native English words head and line. Head descends from the Old English heafod, meaning the top of the body and, by extension, the chief or leading part of anything, while line comes through Old English and Latin linea, meaning a row of text or a stretched thread. By the early 1800s newspapers were using headline for the bold line of large type set at the head of a story, and that printing sense quickly came to stand for prominence itself. From there the verb to headline grew in the entertainment world of the early twentieth century, meaning to appear as the named star whose billing sits at the top of the bill. The present participle headlining therefore carries the literal image of a name printed at the very top of the page, which is a tidy way to remember that the spelling keeps the whole word line intact in the middle.

How the word is built

• head (top, chief part)
• line (printed row of text)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)