Head vs. Tail — What's the Difference?

The head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste, respectively. Some very simple animals may not have a head, but many bilaterally symmetric forms do, regardless of size.

The tail is the section at the rear end of certain kinds of animals’ bodies; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds.

The upper part of the human body, or the front or upper part of the body of an animal, typically separated from the rest of the body by a neck, and containing the brain, mouth, and sense organs.

The hindmost part of an animal, especially when prolonged beyond the rest of the body, such as the flexible extension of the backbone in a vertebrate, the feathers at the hind end of a bird, or a terminal appendage in an insect

A thing resembling a head either in form or in relation to a whole.

A thing resembling an animal's tail in its shape or position, typically extending downwards or outwards at the end of something

The front, forward, or upper part or end of something.

The end of a long train or line of people or vehicles

A person in charge of something; a director or leader

A person secretly following another to observe their movements

A person considered as a numerical unit

A person's buttocks

A component in an audio, video, or information system by which information is transferred from an electrical signal to the recording medium, or vice versa.

The side of a coin without the image of a head on it (used when tossing a coin to determine a winner)

A body of water kept at a particular height in order to provide a supply at sufficient pressure

Limitation of ownership, especially of an estate or title limited to a person and their direct descendants

A toilet on a ship or boat

Follow and observe (someone) closely, especially in secret

The word that governs all the other words in a phrase in which it is used, having the same grammatical function as the whole phrase.

(of an object in flight) drift or curve in a particular direction

A superficial deposit of rock fragments, formed at the edge of an ice sheet by repeated freezing and thawing and then moved downhill.

Remove the stalks or ends of (fruit or vegetables) in preparation for cooking.

A group of pheasants

Pull on the end of (a rope) after it has been wrapped round the drum of a winch a few times, in order to prevent slipping when the winch rotates.

Chief; principal

Join (one thing) to another.

Be in the leading position on

Provide with a tail

Give a title or caption to

The posterior part of an animal, especially when elongated and extending beyond the trunk or main part of the body.

Move in a specified direction

The lowest part of a garment such as a shirt or coat.

Shoot or pass (the ball) with the head

The rear end of an automobile or other vehicle.

Lop off the upper part or branches of (a plant or tree)

The rear portion of the fuselage of an aircraft or the assembly of stabilizing planes and control surfaces in this portion.

(of a lettuce or cabbage) form a head.

The vaned rear portion of a bomb or missile.

The uppermost or forwardmost part of the body of a vertebrate, containing the brain and the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and jaws.

A long thin part on some kites that hangs down below the part that catches the wind to provide stability.

The analogous part of an invertebrate organism.

The long stream of gas and dust that is illuminated and directed away from the head of a comet when it is close to the sun.

The length or height of such a part

A braid of hair; a pigtail.

The seat of the faculty of reason; intelligence, intellect, or mind

A train of followers; a retinue.

Mental ability or aptitude

The end of a line of persons or things.

Freedom of choice or action

The short closing line of certain stanzas of verse.

A habitual drug user. Often used in combination

The refuse or dross remaining from processes such as distilling or milling.

An enthusiast. Often used in combination

A formal evening costume typically worn by men.

A person considered foolish or contemptible. Often used in combination

A tailcoat.

A portrait or representation of a person's head.

Often tails (used with a sing. verb) The side of a coin not having the principal design.

Often heads (used with a sing. verb) The side of a coin having the principal design, often the profile of a political leader's head.

The trail of a person or animal in flight

(Informal) A headache

A person assigned or employed to follow and report on someone else's movements and actions

An individual; a person

(Slang) The buttocks.

Pl. head A single animal

Vulgar Slang Sexual intercourse.

A person who leads, rules, or is in charge; a leader, chief, or director

Offensive Slang Women considered as sexual partners.

A headmaster or headmistress.

Limitation of the inheritance of an estate to a particular person and that person's heirs.

The foremost or leading position

Of or relating to a tail or tails

A headwaiter.

Situated in the tail, as of an airplane

The difference in depth of a liquid at two given points.

Being in tail

The measure of pressure at the lower point expressed in terms of this difference.

To provide with a tail

The pressure exerted by a liquid or gas

To deprive of a tail; dock.

The liquid or gas exerting the pressure.

To serve as the tail or last part of

The froth or foam that rises to the top in pouring an effervescent liquid, such as beer.

To connect (often dissimilar or incongruous objects) by the tail or end

The tip of an abscess, boil, or pimple, in which pus forms.

To set one end of (a beam, board, or brick) into a wall.

A turning point; a crisis

(Informal) To follow and keep (a person) under surveillance.

A projection, weight, or fixture at the end of an elongated object

To become lengthened or spaced when moving in a line

The working end of a tool or implement

To be inserted at one end into a wall, as a floor timber or beam.

The looped part at the end a lacrosse stick, to which the webbing is attached.

(Informal) To follow

The part of an explosive device that carries the explosive; a warhead.

To go aground with the stern foremost.

The part of a stringed instrument where the strings are wound; a tuning head.

To lie or swing with the stern in a named direction, as when riding at anchor or on a mooring.

A tuning machine.

(Sports) To veer from a straight course in the direction of the dominant hand of the player propelling the ball

The rounded proximal end of a long bone

(anatomy) The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to its posterior and near the anus.

The end of a muscle that is attached to the less movable part of the skeleton.

An object or part of an object resembling a tail in shape, such as the thongs on a cat-o'-nine-tails.

An attachment to or part of a machine that holds or contains the operative device.

The back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything.

The magnetic head of a tape recorder or VCR.

The feathers attached to the pygostyle of a bird.

The device in a magnetic disk or tape drive that enables it to read data from and write data to the disk or tape.

The tail-end of an object, e.g. the rear of an aircraft's fuselage, containing the tailfin.

A rounded compact mass, as of leaves or buds

The rear structure of an aircraft, the empennage.

(Botany) A flower head.

(astronomy) The visible stream of dust and gases blown from a comet by the solar wind.

The uppermost part; the top

The latter part of a time period or event, or (collectively) persons or objects represented in this part.

The end considered the most important

(statistics) The part of a distribution most distant from the mode; as, a long tail.

Either end of an object, such as a drum, whose two ends are interchangeable.

One who surreptitiously follows another.

The forward part of a vessel.

(cricket) The lower order of batsmen in the batting order, usually specialist bowlers.

The top part or upper edge of a sail.

(typography) The lower loop of the letters in the Roman alphabet, as in g, q or y.

A toilet, especially on a ship.

The side of a coin not bearing the head; normally the side on which the monetary value of the coin is indicated; the reverse.

A passage or gallery in a coal mine.

(mathematics) All the last terms of a sequence, from some term on.

The top of a book or page.

The buttocks or backside.

A headline or heading.

(slang) The penis of a person or animal.

A distinct topic or category

Sexual intercourse.

Headway; progress.

(kayaking) The stern; the back of the kayak.

(Linguistics) The word determining the grammatical category of a constituent, often establishing relations of concord or agreement (such as subject-verb agreement) with other constituents.

A train or company of attendants; a retinue.

Vulgar Slang Oral sex.

(anatomy) The distal tendon of a muscle.

Of, relating to, or intended for the head. Often used in combination

(entomology) A filamentous projection on the tornal section of each hind wing of certain butterflies.

Foremost in rank or importance

A downy or feathery appendage of certain achens, formed of the permanent elongated style.

Placed at the top or the front

(surgery) A portion of an incision, at its beginning or end, which does not go through the whole thickness of the skin, and is more painful than a complete incision; called also tailing.

(Slang) Of, relating to, or for drugs or drug users.

One of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.

To be in charge of; lead

(nautical) A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.

To be in the first or foremost position of

(music) The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.

To aim, point, or turn in a certain direction

(mining) A tailing.

To remove the head or top of.

(architecture) The bottom or lower portion of a member or part such as a slate or tile.

(Sports) To hit (a soccer ball) in the air with one's head.

A tailcoat.

To provide with a head

(electrical engineering) pigtail

To proceed or go in a certain direction

(legal) Limitation of inheritance to certain heirs.

To form a head, as lettuce or cabbage.

(transitive) To follow and observe surreptitiously.

To originate, as a stream or river; rise.

(architecture) To hold by the end; said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; with in or into

(countable) The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth, and main sense organs.

(nautical) To swing with the stern in a certain direction; said of a vessel at anchor.

(people) To do with heads.

To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.

(animals) To do with heads.

To pull or draw by the tail.

(countable) The topmost, foremost, or leading part.

(legal) Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed.

The end of a table.

Limitation; abridgment.

(countable) The principal operative part of a machine or tool.

The terminal, and usually flexible, posterior appendage of an animal.

The foam that forms on top of beer or other carbonated beverages.

Any long, flexible terminal appendage; whatever resembles, in shape or position, the tail of an animal, as a catkin.

(engineering) The end cap of a cylindrically-shaped pressure vessel.

Hence, the back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything, - as opposed to the head, or the superior part.

(coopering) The end cap of a cask or other barrel.

A train or company of attendants; a retinue.

(geology) The uppermost part of a valley.

The side of a coin opposite to that which bears the head, effigy, or date; the reverse; - rarely used except in the expression "heads or tails," employed when a coin is thrown up for the purpose of deciding some point by its fall.

Deposits near the top of a geological succession.

The distal tendon of a muscle.

(journalism) headline

A downy or feathery appendage to certain achenes. It is formed of the permanent elongated style.

(medicine) The end of an abscess where pus collects.

A portion of an incision, at its beginning or end, which does not go through the whole thickness of the skin, and is more painful than a complete incision; - called also tailing.

(music) The headstock of a guitar.

A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.

(nautical) A leading component.

The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.

(British) A headland.

Same as Tailing, 4.

A leader or expert.

The bottom or lower portion of a member or part, as a slate or tile.

The place of honour, or of command; the most important or foremost position; the front.

The long visible stream of gases, ions, or dust particles extending from the head of a comet in the direction opposite to the sun.

(metonymy) Leader; chief; mastermind.

In some forms of rope-laying machine, pieces of rope attached to the iron bar passing through the grooven wooden top containing the strands, for wrapping around the rope to be laid.

(metonymy) A headmaster or headmistress.

A tailed coat; a tail coat.

A person with an extensive knowledge of hip hop.

In airplanes, an airfoil or group of airfoils used at the rear to confer stability.

A significant or important part.

The buttocks.

A beginning or end, a protuberance.

Sexual intercourse, or a woman used for sexual intercourse; as, to get some tail; to find a piece of tail. See also tailing{3}.

A component.

Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed; as, estate tail.

Headway; progress.

To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.

Topic; subject.

To pull or draw by the tail.

Denouement; crisis.

To hold by the end; - said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; - with in or into.

(fluid dynamics) Pressure and energy.

To swing with the stern in a certain direction; - said of a vessel at anchor; as, this vessel tails down stream.

A buildup of fluid pressure, often quantified as pressure head.

The posterior part of the body of a vertebrate especially when elongated and extending beyond the trunk or main part of the body

The difference in elevation between two points in a column of fluid, and the resulting pressure of the fluid at the lower point.

The time of the last part of something;

More generally, energy in a mass of fluid divided by its weight.

Any projection that resembles the tail of an animal

Fellatio or cunnilingus; oral sex.

The fleshy part of the human body that you sit on;

(slang) The glans penis.

A spy employed to follow someone and report their movements

A heavy or habitual user of illicit drugs.

(usually plural) the reverse side of a coin that does not bear the representation of a person's head

(obsolete) Power; armed force.

The rear part of an aircraft

Of, relating to, or intended for the head.

The rear part of a ship

Foremost in rank or importance.

Go after with the intent to catch;

Placed at the top or the front.

Remove or shorten the tail of an animal

Coming from in front.

Remove the stalk of fruits or berries

(transitive) To be in command of. (See also head up.)

(transitive) To come at the beginning or front of; to commence.

(transitive) To strike with the head; as in soccer, to head the ball

(intransitive) To move in a specified direction.

(fishing) To remove the head from a fish.

(intransitive) To originate; to spring; to have its course, as a river.

(intransitive) To form a head.

(transitive) To form a head to; to fit or furnish with a head.

(transitive) To cut off the top of; to lop off.

To behead; to decapitate.

To go in front of.

To get in the front of, so as to hinder or stop; to oppose.

(by extension) To check or restrain.

To set on the head.

The anterior or superior part of an animal, containing the brain, or chief ganglia of the nervous system, the mouth, and in the higher animals, the chief sensory organs; poll; cephalon.

The uppermost, foremost, or most important part of an inanimate object; such a part as may be considered to resemble the head of an animal; often, also, the larger, thicker, or heavier part or extremity, in distinction from the smaller or thinner part, or from the point or edge; as, the head of a cane, a nail, a spear, an ax, a mast, a sail, a ship; that which covers and closes the top or the end of a hollow vessel; as, the head of a cask or a steam boiler.

The place where the head should go; as, the head of a bed, of a grave, etc.; the head of a carriage, that is, the hood which covers the head.

The most prominent or important member of any organized body; the chief; the leader; as, the head of a college, a school, a church, a state, and the like.

The place or honor, or of command; the most important or foremost position; the front; as, the head of the table; the head of a column of soldiers.

Each one among many; an individual; - often used in a plural sense; as, a thousand head of cattle.

The seat of the intellect; the brain; the understanding; the mental faculties; as, a good head, that is, a good mind; it never entered his head, it did not occur to him; of his own head, of his own thought or will.

The source, fountain, spring, or beginning, as of a stream or river; as, the head of the Nile; hence, the altitude of the source, or the height of the surface, as of water, above a given place, as above an orifice at which it issues, and the pressure resulting from the height or from motion; sometimes also, the quantity in reserve; as, a mill or reservoir has a good head of water, or ten feet head; also, that part of a gulf or bay most remote from the outlet or the sea.

A headland; a promontory; as, Gay Head.

A separate part, or topic, of a discourse; a theme to be expanded; a subdivision; as, the heads of a sermon.

Culminating point or crisis; hence, strength; force; height.

Power; armed force.

A headdress; a covering of the head; as, a laced head; a head of hair.

An ear of wheat, barley, or of one of the other small cereals.

A dense cluster of flowers, as in clover, daisies, thistles; a capitulum.

The antlers of a deer.

A rounded mass of foam which rises on a pot of beer or other effervescing liquor.

Tiles laid at the eaves of a house.

Principal; chief; leading; first; as, the head master of a school; the head man of a tribe; a head chorister; a head cook.

To be at the head of; to put one's self at the head of; to lead; to direct; to act as leader to; as, to head an army, an expedition, or a riot.

To form a head to; to fit or furnish with a head; as, to head a nail.

To behead; to decapitate.

To cut off the top of; to lop off; as, to head trees.

To go in front of; to get in the front of, so as to hinder or stop; to oppose; hence, to check or restrain; as, to head a drove of cattle; to head a person; the wind heads a ship.

To set on the head; as, to head a cask.

To originate; to spring; to have its source, as a river.

To go or point in a certain direction; to tend; as, how does the ship head?

To form a head; as, this kind of cabbage heads early.

The upper part of the human body or the front part of the body in animals; contains the face and brains;

A single domestic animal;

That which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason;

A person who is in charge;

The front of a military formation or procession;

The pressure exerted by a fluid;

The top of something;

The source of water from which a stream arises;

(grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent

The tip of an abscess (where the pus accumulates)

The length or height based on the size of a human or animal head;

A dense clusters of flowers or foliage;

The educator who has executive authority for a school;

An individual person;

A user of (usually soft) drugs;

A rounded compact mass;

The foam or froth that accumulates at the top when you pour an effervescent liquid into a container;

The part in the front or nearest the viewer;

A difficult juncture;

Forward movement;

A V-shaped mark at one end of an arrow pointer;

The subject matter at issue;

A line of text serving to indicate what the passage below it is about;

The rounded end of a bone that bits into a rounded cavity in another bone to form a joint;

That part of a skeletal muscle that is away from the bone that it moves

(computer science) a tiny electromagnetic coil and metal pole used to write and read magnetic patterns on a disk

(usually plural) an obverse side of a coin that bears the representation of a person's head;

The striking part of a tool;

(nautical) a toilet on board a boat or ship

A projection out from one end;

A membrane that is stretched taut over a drum

Oral-genital stimulation;

To go or travel towards;

Be in charge of;

Travel in front of; go in advance of others;

Be the first or leading member of (a group) and excel;

Direct the course; determine the direction of travelling

Take its rise;

Be in the front of or on top of;

Form a head or come or grow to a head;

Remove the head of;