headshake

1. 1.

   the act of turning your head left and right to signify denial or disbelief or bemusement

   “I could tell from their headshakes that they didn't believe me”

   Synonymsheadshaking

   Broadermotion

Other forms of headshake

plural

headshakes·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about headshake

What does headshake mean?

headshake means "the act of turning your head left and right to signify denial or disbelief or bemusement".

How many syllables are in headshake?

headshake has 3 syllables: he-ad-shake. The stress falls on "he".

What is another word for headshake?

Close synonyms include headshaking. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is headshake a common word?

headshake is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.