headshot

English

Etymology

From head +‎ shot.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

headshot (plural headshots)

1. A portrait for branding or social media.
   • 2023 November 6, Chris Willman, quoting Bryan West, “Gannett’s Taylor Swift Reporter, Revealed: Meet Bryan West, the First Full-Time Swiftie Journalist”, in Variety‎^[1]:

     I went home, I changed, I went to Walgreens and printed out a headshot of me and signed it ‘from your favorite local news reporter,’ and I sat in the parking lot for four hours until she said, ‘Hey, your passes to go backstage are at will-call’.

2. A gunshot to the head.
   • 2004 April, Computer and Video Games, number 271, page 24:

     Smelling victory amongst the gunpowder Graeme started shooting off his mouth. “True Counter-Strikers like me don’t even count kills unless they’re headshots or a knife in the back of the nut…”

3. A one-page, double-sided resume of an actor, consisting of the actor's photograph (usually of the head and shoulders) on one side and their curriculum vitae on the other.

Translations

portrait

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 大頭相 / 大头相 (daai⁶ tau⁴ soeng³), 大頭 / 大头 (daai⁶ tau⁴)

  Mandarin: 大頭照 / 大头照 (dàtóuzhào)

• Spanish: ficha (es) f, foto fisonómica f, foto facial f
• Swedish: porträttfoto n

gunshot to the head

• Afrikaans: kopskoot
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 爆頭 / 爆头 (zh) (bàotóu)

• Dutch: kopschot (nl) n
• Finnish: pääosuma
• French: tir dans la tête m
• German: Kopfschuss (de) m
• Hungarian: fejlövés (hu) sg
• Japanese: ヘッドショット (heddoshotto)
• Polish: headshot (pl) m
• Portuguese: tiro na cabeça m headshot m
• Russian: вы́стрел в голову (výstrel v golovu), хэдшот (xɛdšot)
• Spanish: tiro a la cabeza m, disparo capital m
• Swedish: huvudskott n
• Turkish: headshot

Verb

headshot (third-person singular simple present headshots, present participle headshotting, simple past and past participle headshotted)

1. (transitive, video games, slang) To kill (someone) by shooting them in the head.
   • 2013, Doug Walsh, Gears of War: Judgment, collector’s edition, Indianapolis, Ind.: DK/BradyGames, →ISBN, page 336:

     SCOUTMASTER / HEADSHOTTED A SCOUT WITH THE BREECHSHOT.

   • 2013 May 1, Matt Grippi, “Battleblock Theater is insane, hilarious fun”, in Daily 49er, volume LIX, number 601, Long Beach, Calif.: California State University, Long Beach, page 5, column 3:

     Everybody knows someone who feels left out when video games are being played. Maybe your girlfriend is bad at headshotting newbs in “Halo 4” or racing against you in “Gran Turismo,” but she could definitely play this.

   • 2015 December, Tristan Donovan, “The Making of… Kill Switch”, in Edge, number 286, →ISSN, page 97:

     Workplace bouts of Novalogic’s tactical firstperson shooter Delta Force 2 further seeded the sense that cover was neglected. “We all were playing that after work when we were having the debate about cover and first- or thirdperson,” [Chris] Esaki says. “I remember very vividly getting headshotted when I thought I was behind a piece of cover, but it was clear in the replay afterwards that my head was above the piece of stone. I couldn’t tell, and that was the reason why we went thirdperson with Kill Switch.”

Anagrams

• hot-heads, hotheads

Polish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English headshot.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈxɛt.ʂɔt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛtʂɔt
• Syllabification: head‧shot

Noun

headshot m inan

1. (video games) headshot (gunshot to the head)

Declension

Declension of headshot

	singular	plural
nominative	headshot	headshoty
genitive	headshota	headshotów
dative	headshotowi	headshotom
accusative	headshot	headshoty
instrumental	headshotem	headshotami
locative	headshocie	headshotach
vocative	headshocie	headshoty

Further reading

• headshot in Polish dictionaries at PWN