Meanings
- A town in Tyne and Wear, in north-east England, found upon the southern bank of the Tyne (OS grid ref NZ2562).
Of this number, 64 belonged to the above district, including Newcastle, with the addition of Gateshead, which lies on the opposite bank of the Tyne, in the county of Durham; and these afforded 2.13 cases per annum, which, as the population was 213,000, gave one case for every 100,000 inhabitants.
1830, John Yelloly, Sequel to a Paper on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases, and on the Concretions to Which Such Diseases Give Rise, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 120 - A metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear formed in 1974, with its headquarters in the town.
- A suburb of Newcastle in the City of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, named after the town in England.
Origin
- Old English*Gāteshēafod
- Middle EnglishGatesheved
- EnglishGateshead
From Middle English Gatesheved (c. 1190), from Old English *Gāteshēafod, from gāt (“goat”) + hēafod (“head”). First mentioned by Bede in Latin in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People as ad caput caprae (literally “at the goat's head”), meaning a headland or hill frequented by (wild) goats. Both Latin and English names may be calques of a Brythonic predecessor formed from Proto-Brythonic *gaβr, from Proto-Celtic *gabros (“goat”), and might have been the Romano-British fort of Gabrosentum.
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Greek Γκέητσχεντ
- Γκέητσχεντ (Gkéitschent)town in the county of Tyne and Wear
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Gateshead. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Gateshead
“Gateshead.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Gateshead. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Gateshead,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Gateshead.
Source: Gateshead on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.