headsman

plural headsmen

1. ScotlandobsoleteA chief person; a head man
2. An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.

   And made him Headsman, for we said, / "Who's next to be decapited / Cannot cut off another's head / Until he's cut his own off[…]"

   1885, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert; Arthur Sullivan, composer, […] The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, London: Chappel & Co., […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   And of those base-minded jesters or buffons, some have beene seene, that even at the point of death would never leave their jesting and scoffing. He whom the heads-man threw off from the Gallowes cried out, ‘Row the Gally,’ which was his ordinarie by-word.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 40, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

3. historicalbusinessA labourer in a colliery who transports the coal from the workings to the horseway, and who is oftentimes assisted by a younger worker called a foal.
4. nauticalOne in command of a whaling vessel.

   Many had wondered why it was necessary for the headsman, as the skipper was called, to change over with the man who threw the harpoon[.]

   1961, Tom Mead, Killers of Eden, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 8