wirehead

W4I1R1E1H4E1A1D2

noun

A person who has an electronic brain implant.

OriginEnglish head ← Middle English heed ← Old English hēafod →
Scrabble 15
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Meanings

nounwirehead (plural wireheads)

plural wireheads

  1. literatureA person who has an electronic brain implant.

    He turns around and looks behind him. The wirehead he saw a few seconds ago is out in the open now, standing all by himself at the edge of a raft. Everyone else has cleared out of there.

    1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 385
  2. literatureA person who takes part in wireheading.
  3. broadlycomputingA hardware hacker.
  4. broadlyA person who likes to tinker with electronics.
verbwirehead (third-person singular simple present wireheads, present participle wireheading, simple past and past participle wireheaded)

present singular third person wireheads · participle present wireheading · participle past wireheaded · past wireheaded

  1. literatureTo artificially stimulate the brain to experience pleasure.
  2. artificial intelligenceTo hack one's own reward channel.

Origin

  1. Englishwire
  2. Proto-Indo-European*kap-?
  3. Proto-Indo-European*kap-
  4. Proto-Indo-European*káput
  5. Proto-Germanic*haubudą
  6. Old Englishhēafod
  7. Middle Englishheed
  8. Englishhead
  9. Englishwirehead

From wire + -head.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

hairweed
Cite this entry
APA

wirehead. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wirehead

MLA

“wirehead.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wirehead. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “wirehead,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wirehead.

Source: wirehead on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.