headswoman
nounEtymology From head + -s- + -woman.
1
A female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
- No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman.1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, chapter 3 part 9:
2
East Anglia (obsolete) A midwife.
- HEADSWOMAN, s. a midwife. It would be presumptuous to pry into obstetric mysteries, to discover the origin or propriety of this denomination.1830, Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia, volume II, London: J. B. Nichols and Son, page 154: