See head-shrinker on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Originally US, probably by reference to slang terms like “swelled head” for someone with delusions of grandeur; a psychiatrist would remove such delusions, thus figuratively shrinking the patient's swelled head.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "head-shrinkers",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
},
{
"form": "headshrinker",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
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"expansion": "head-shrinker (plural head-shrinkers)",
"name": "en-noun"
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],
"lang": "English",
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"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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176,
188
]
],
"ref": "1957, West Side Story:",
"text": "DIESEL: In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ACTION: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived. DIESEL: So take him to a headshrinker.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink."
],
"id": "en-head-shrinker-en-noun-VLFJnDe9",
"links": [
[
"psychiatrist",
"psychiatrist"
],
[
"psychotherapist",
"psychotherapist"
],
[
"shrink",
"shrink"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang) A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "headshrink"
},
{
"word": "shrink"
},
{
"word": "trick cyclist"
}
],
"tags": [
"slang"
]
},
{
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{
"_dis": "10 90",
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{
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{
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},
{
"_dis": "27 73",
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"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "24 76",
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Healthcare occupations",
"orig": "en:Healthcare occupations",
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"ref": "2010, Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It:",
"text": "I listened to the sculptor of Dead Dad give an interview to a European television station while he crouched by the shrunken corpse of his own creation, a huge technical advance over the headshrinkers of New Guinea.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes."
],
"id": "en-head-shrinker-en-noun-QA1NcZFp",
"raw_glosses": [
"(literally) One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes."
],
"tags": [
"literally"
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "17 83",
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"lang_code": "da",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "hovedjæger"
},
{
"_dis1": "17 83",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"lang_code": "fi",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"word": "kallonkutistaja"
},
{
"_dis1": "17 83",
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"word": "fejzsugorító"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-head-shrinker.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4d/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
]
}
],
"word": "head-shrinker"
}
{
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"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"Entries with translation boxes",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Terms with Danish translations",
"Terms with Finnish translations",
"Terms with Hungarian translations",
"en:Healthcare occupations"
],
"etymology_text": "Originally US, probably by reference to slang terms like “swelled head” for someone with delusions of grandeur; a psychiatrist would remove such delusions, thus figuratively shrinking the patient's swelled head.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "head-shrinkers",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
},
{
"form": "headshrinker",
"tags": [
"alternative"
]
}
],
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{
"args": {},
"expansion": "head-shrinker (plural head-shrinkers)",
"name": "en-noun"
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
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"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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176,
188
]
],
"ref": "1957, West Side Story:",
"text": "DIESEL: In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ACTION: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived. DIESEL: So take him to a headshrinker.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink."
],
"links": [
[
"psychiatrist",
"psychiatrist"
],
[
"psychotherapist",
"psychotherapist"
],
[
"shrink",
"shrink"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang) A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "headshrink"
},
{
"word": "shrink"
},
{
"word": "trick cyclist"
}
],
"tags": [
"slang"
]
},
{
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"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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186,
199
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],
"ref": "2010, Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It:",
"text": "I listened to the sculptor of Dead Dad give an interview to a European television station while he crouched by the shrunken corpse of his own creation, a huge technical advance over the headshrinkers of New Guinea.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes."
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(literally) One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes."
],
"tags": [
"literally"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-head-shrinker.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4d/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/En-au-head-shrinker.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
]
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"lang_code": "da",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "hovedjæger"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"lang_code": "fi",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"word": "kallonkutistaja"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"lang_code": "hu",
"sense": "one who shrinks the heads of the dead",
"word": "fejzsugorító"
}
],
"word": "head-shrinker"
}
Download raw JSONL data for head-shrinker meaning in All languages combined (2.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (d6fca27 and 65e1673). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.