pinhead

plural pinheads · alternative pin-head · alternative pin head

1. The head of a pin. (Frequently used in size comparisons.)

   Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background.

   1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 203

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   The moment the nitre was red hot, the coal, previously reduced to small pieces of the size of a pinhead, was projected in portions of one or two grains at a time…

   1810, Thomas Thomson, A System of Chemistry, Vol. 4, Bell & Bradfute, page 602

2. slangA foolish or stupid person.

   My daddy repairs cars driven by women who are pinheads.

   1990, Kindergarten Cop

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   I don't want to be a pinhead no more / I just met a nurse that I could go for

   1977, “Pinhead”, in Leave Home, performed by Ramones

   Percy, who hadn't noticed that Fred had bewitched his prefect badge so that it now read "Pinhead," kept asking them all what they were sniggering at.

   1998, J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, page 212

   Synonyms: doofus, dumbbell, dunce, addle-brain, addlehead, addle pate, airhead, baboon

3. slangA telemark skier.
4. slangmedicineA human head that is unusually tapered or small, often due to microcephaly, or a person with that trait. Often promoted in freak shows as "human pinheads".

   The microcephalic idiot is an unfortunate with a "pinhead," sometimes exhibited as a "what's-it" in circus side-shows, whose mental age never goes beyond that of an imbecile.

   1939, Amram Scheinfeld, Morton David Schweitzer, You and Heredity, Frederick A. Stokes Co., page 155

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   Zip the What-Is-It was simply a Negro idiot. […] For half an hour at a time, David Belasco used to watch Zip at Coney Island. The producer insisted he saw signs of intelligence in the pinhead […]

   1943, Oliver Ramsay Pilat, Sodom by the Sea: An Affectionate History of Coney Island, Garden City Publishing, page 187

5. slangpet storesA newborn cricket used as food for pets.

   Crickets can be purchased in many sizes from newborns ("pinheads") to adults.

   2000, Manny Rubio, Scorpions: Everything About Purchase, Care, Feeding, and Housing^(http://books.google.com/books?id=XjUwzS7emXQC&pg=PA70&dq=Rubio+newborns-(%22pinheads%22)&lr=&num=20&as_brr=0&sig=rDludfhNOKOBL5uKvEDX_Asvj4Y), Barron's Educational Series, →ISBN, page 70

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   A newly hatched gecko will need pretty small crickets, but you will not have to go all the way down to pinheads.

   1994, Raymond E. Hunziker, Leopard Geckos, Publisher, →ISBN, page 16

6. biologyThe immature juvenile fruiting body of a mushroom prior to its gills opening.

plural Pinheads

1. derogatoryslangA member of the Provisional IRA.