Dictionary

headcase en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

From head + case.

Meanings

1. (countable, derogatory, informal) A mentally unbalanced, unpredictable person, especially one who displays aggressive behavior.
   • "A stockbroker doesn't have 80,000 people sitting behind him just waiting for a mistake," says Jim Fassel, whom fans serenaded with "Fire Fassel!" chants during his final weeks as head coach of the New York Giants last season. "It can drive you crazy." From head coach to head case in three easy steps. 2004 April 5, Sean Gregory, “Full-Court Stress”, in Time, archived from the original on 28 Oct 2010:
2. (uncountable) A genetic sequence that inhibits terminal branching of the trachea and regulates dendrite pruning.
   • Another gene downstream of EcR/Usp is headcase. Screening genes that show genetic interactions with EcR mutants, Loncle and Williams identified headcase as a regulator of dendrite pruning (Loncle and Williams 2012). 2016, Kazuo Emoto, Rachel Wong, Eric Huang, Casper Hoogenraad, editors, Dendrites: Development and Disease, Springer, →ISBN, page 280:

Forms

Synonyms

hdc