pinhead

«pinhead» in Mova's school dictionary: the tiny round top of a pin — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a pinhead, pinheads)

meaning for a pupil

1) A pinhead is the tiny round top of a pin. tree →

2) Something "the size of a pinhead" is very, very small. tree →

3) (slang, rude) Calling someone a pinhead means you think they are stupid; it is an insult. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and maths it is used for comparing sizes: a dot the size of a pinhead is about 1–2 millimetres. In stories it shows something is tiny (a pinhead of light far away). As an insult it is unkind and should not be used about people.

examples

• The seed was no bigger than a pinhead. tree →
• Push the pin in until only the pinhead shows. tree →
• A tiny spider, the size of a pinhead, ran across the page. tree →
• Far away we saw a pinhead of light from the lighthouse. tree →
• Ladybird eggs are about the size of a pinhead. tree →
• (rude) "Watch where you're going, you pinhead!" he shouted. tree →
• Calling someone a pinhead is rude, so Mum told him to say sorry. tree →

note

One word, no hyphen. Countable: a pinhead, pinheads. "The size of a pinhead" is a size comparison, not an exact measurement. The insult sense is rude.

In the corpora

• Microbes are living things far too small to see; a thousand bacteria in a row would just about stretch across a pinhead.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «pinhead» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.