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HEADLONG
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
With the head foremost
Example:
a headlong dive into the pool
Synonyms:
headfirst; headlong
Classified under:
Similar:
forward (at or near or directed toward the front)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Excessively quick
Example:
a headlong rush to sell
Synonyms:
hasty; headlong
Classified under:
Similar:
hurried (moving rapidly or performed quickly or in great haste)
II. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
With the head foremost
Example:
the runner slid headlong into third base
Synonyms:
headfirst; headlong
Classified under:
Sense 2
Meaning:
In a hasty and foolhardy manner
Example:
he fell headlong in love with his cousin
Synonyms:
headlong; rashly
Classified under:
Sense 3
Meaning:
At breakneck speed
Example:
burst headlong through the gate
Synonyms:
headlong; precipitately
Classified under:
Adverbs
Pertainym:
headlong (excessively quick)
Context examples:
It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
"Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first—" He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody's arms, now running headlong at a post.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
