forehead

noun

SayFOR-hed/ˈfɔɹˌhɛd//ˈfɔː(ɹ)hɛd/

3 meanings of forehead

1
nouncountable
The area of the face between the eyebrows and the line where the hair begins.
A deep frown creased his forehead as he read the letter.
The child's forehead felt hot, so her mother checked for a fever.
Similarbrow
Note
The word is built exactly as it looks: fore- plus head, the front of the head, already joined in Old English forehēafod. Its relatives across Germanic follow the same pattern: Dutch voorhoofd, German Vorhaupt, Scots foreheid. Danish forhoved widens to brow and even face. Beneath the skin lies what Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963) calls the frontal bone of the forehead.
2
nouncountable or uncountable
The area between the top edge of a mobile phone's screen and the top of the phone.
Reviewers praised the slim forehead that gave the device an almost edge-to-edge look.
Hiding the camera in the forehead let engineers reduce the top bezel.
Similarbezel
Oppositechin
3
noununcountable
Boldness or nerve; the audacity to act or speak without shame or hesitation.
She faced her accusers with a forehead that never once wavered.
Only a man of such forehead would deny the charge to the magistrate's face.
Similaraudacity, nerve, effrontery, gall, boldness
Oppositetimidity, shyness
Note
A figurative use that treats the face as the place where shame shows, or fails to. In Shakespeare's As You Like It, old Adam says he never wooed the means of weakness "with unbashful forehead." The point is a brow that does not blush. Read it alongside the facial meaning: the boldness is pictured as something worn openly on the face.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English forhed, from Old English forehēafod, from Proto-West Germanic *forēhaubid, formed from fore- plus head. It is related to Dutch voorhoofd, German Vorhaupt, and Danish forhoved.