a. [f. prec. + -ED2.] a. Naut. Having a fiddle-head. b. Of a fork, spoon: Having the handle made after the pattern of a fiddle. c. Empty-headed, d. (see quot. 1883).
1840. Hood, Kilmansegg, First Step, iii.
| Try him, whenever you will, you find | |
| His mind in his legs, and his legs in his mind, | |
| All prongs and folly—in short a kind | |
| Of fork—that is fiddle-headed. |
1851. H. Melville, Moby-Dick, viii. 43. Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.
1854. Whyte Melville, Gen. Bounce, v. (1855), 104. ‘You’ve broke it, you fiddle-headed brute!’
1883. G. Stables, Our Friend the Dog, vii. 60. Fiddle-headed, along, gaunt, wolfish head, like what one sees in some Mastiffs.
