Dictionary

deadheader en · NOUN

Etymology

From deadhead + -er.

Meanings

1. One who removes the dead remains of blossoms from plants.
   • Instead, she is a weeder, actually for enjoyment ("That's when I get some of my best thinking done"), a keen harvester of flowers for the house, and a merciless deadheader of perennials in the autumn. 1992, George Schenk, Gardening With Friends, page 210:
   • I'm just the deadheader of roses and pansies—a very lowly assistant gardener. 2002, Miss Read, Gossip from Thrush Green, →ISBN:
   • Take care if deadheading in the evening when the flowers have just folded down as bees seem to enjoy resting in them at this time and may give the deadheader a stinging surprise. 1998, Tracy DiSabato-Aust, The Well-tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques, →ISBN:
2. A non-paying passenger.
   • A septuagenarian deadheader? A senior citizen stowaway? Unlikely. 2001, Kathy Reichs, Fatal Voyage: A Novel, →ISBN, page 98:
   • When aircraft are swapped, a pilot might travel as a deadheader on the flight he or she was originally scheduled to fly. 2007, Doug Morris, From the Flight Deck: Plane Talk and Sky Science, →ISBN, page 7:
   • There's company rules against riders. I told him tonight he's gonna have a deadheader; all he wanted to know was you gonna have coffee money. 1947, The New Republic - Volume 117, Part 1, page 18:
3. A scheduled trip to move a vehicle that has no cargo and no passengers.
   • From Granite City, I think it was, we rode a deadheader to Minneapolis. 1995, Journal of American Indian Education - Volumes 35-37, page 53:
   • Next to the cash register, a bulletin board was thumbtacked with notes from deadheaders who needed loads heading west, and shippers looking for a reefer (refrigerated truck) going down to Florida. 1988, Jane Stern, Michael Stern, A taste of America, →ISBN, page 41:
   • Any road, they throw me off at High Plains and then I hitch a ride on some shit deadheader across Chryse because Mr Engineer he's expecting to ride the whole rig with me hanging off. 2014, Ian McDonald, Ares Express, →ISBN:
   • It had been the deteriorating remains of a defunct gold mine when George Perry stumbled across it on a deadheader back from a freight trip/visit to a girlfriend in McGrath in June about twelve years back. 1999, Dana Stabenow, Hunter's Moon, →ISBN, page 4:
4. One who does not work very hard at their job.
   • ...were always the "infamous machine" or the "bosses' candidate" or the "payroll deadheaders and racketeers." 1959, J. J. Wuerthner, The businessman's guide to practical politics, page 143:
   • If before the war better-skilled smeltermen had little recourse against deadheaders, during the war they joined with foremen, itself a telling alliance, in using patriotic expectations to discipline those they believed were illegitimate deadheaders. 2013, Matthew L. Basso, Meet Joe Copper, →ISBN:
5. A racing pigeon that will not leave when released.
   • Don does this to catch "Deadheaders" - birds which circle the wrong way and won't leave the release site. By his precise records, Don can remove deadheaders by a process of elimination. 1989, The American Racing Pigeon News - Volume 105, page 26:

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