table head

plural table heads

1. datedOne of the short ends of a rectangular table, considered to be the most prominent place and often reserved for the host(s).

   He that eates without labour (set him at the table head) he hes no honestie.

   1606, Robert Rollock, Lectures vpon the First and Second Epistles of Pavl to the Thessalonians, page 201

   3 more examples

   Now at the Table-Head she sits, / Presented with the nicest Bits: She look’d on Partridges with Scorn, / Except they tasted of the Corn:

   1723, Jonathan Swift, “Stella at Wood-Park”, in The Works of Jonathan Swift, volume 2, published 1744, page 153

   And when he came into the hall, Polydectes sat at the table-head, and all his nobles and landowners on either side, each according to his rank, feasting on the fish and the goat’s-flesh, and drinking the blood-red wine.

   1856, Charles Kingsley, “Perseus”, in The Heroes; or Greek Fairy Tales, page 95

   Mrs. Bellairs began to choke, sitting grotesquely at the table-head; it was as if she had swallowed a fish-bone at a select dinner-party.

   1943, Graham Greene, chapter 2, in The Ministry of Fear, page 184

   Synonyms: head of the table

2. At a school, the senior pupil in charge of those assigned to a particular meal table; a similar position in other institutions.

   A second bell interrupted the meal, and a prefect summoned the table-head to the prefects' table.

   1965, A. C. V. B. Tetteh-Lartey, chapter 4, in The Schooldays of Shango Solomon, page 33

   1 more example

   During dinner that first evening at Bingham Academy, I sat family-style with kids I didn’t know, all of them different ages. The oldest, a tight-faced teenage girl, announced that she was going to be our table head. She told me I was at the wrong chair.

   2006, Tim Bascom, “Cinders”, in Chameleon Days. An American Boyhood in Ethiopia, page 94

3. medicineThe end of an examining, operating or imaging table on which the patient’s head rests.

   If imaging of the entire thoracic subarachnoid space is not desired, the table head may be quickly brought back to the horizontal position […]

   2002, Alan L. Williams and F. Reed Murtagh, chapter 6, in Handbook of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Spine Procedures, page 121

   1 more example

   Check that the operating table is locked in position […] and that the handle for tipping the table head down (in case the patient vomits) is there and you know how it works.

   1983, J. A. Morris, A Thumbnail Sketch of Theatre Nursing, page 27