Meanings
plural pierheads
- The end of a pier farthest from shore.First known use 17th c.
It came floating like a tethered cloud past the little white toy-like lighthouse at the pierhead.
1976, Angela Carter, “My Father's House”, in Shaking a Leg, Vintage, published 2013, page 211 more example
Here on Papay folk will speak slowly and sympathetically in a one-to-one conversation with a 'soothmoother', but if you're on the fringes of a pierhead debate about the price of cattle or the weather, then you'll soon be submerged beneath a fast-flowing terminological tidal wave.
1996, Jim Hewitson, Clinging to the Edge: Journals from an Orkney Island, page 41
Origin
Cite this entry
pierhead. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pierhead
“pierhead.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pierhead. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pierhead,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pierhead.
Source: pierhead on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.