Headmaster

How to spell headmaster

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce headmaster

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does headmaster mean?

1. nounA man who is in charge of a school, especially a private or independent one.

Headmaster in a sentence

• The headmaster welcomed parents at the school gates on the first day of term.

• A stern letter from the headmaster informed families about the new uniform policy.

Where does headmaster come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound of two older English elements. 'Head' comes from the Old English heafod, meaning the top part of the body and, by extension, the person at the top of a group or organisation. 'Master' arrived from the Latin magister, which literally meant 'chief' or 'one who is greater', built on the root magis 'more'; it passed into Old English and Old French and settled into the sense of a man in charge or a teacher. Joined together from around the fourteenth century, 'headmaster' came to mean the man who leads a school, the chief among its teaching masters. The same magister root survives in 'magistrate' and even in the word 'mister', so the link between authority and the '-master' ending is an old one. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling trap is mostly remembering it is written as one solid word with no space or hyphen.

How the word is built

• head (chief, top)
• master (one in charge, from Latin magister 'master, teacher')