One who or that which has a thick head.
1. One who is dull of intellect; a blockhead.
1871. Carlyle, in Mrs. Carlyle’s Lett. (1883), I. 103, note. Ambitious thickhead.
1882. H. Seebohm, Siberia in Asia, 32. One of the greatest thickheads that I have ever met with.
b. attrib. or adj. = THICK-HEADED b.
1873. Browning, Red Cott. Nt.-cap, II. 235. Who ever has his speech in readiness For thick-head juvenility at fault.
1894. F. S. Ellis, Reynard Fox, 187. I’ll shortly sow strife among Those thick-head folks.
2. A name given in different localities to various birds: e.g., a. Any bird of the subfamily Pachycephalinæ, the Thick-headed Shrikes of the Australian region. b. A scansorial barbet of the subfamily Capitoninæ (Cent. Dict., 1891).
1837. Swainson, Nat. Hist. Birds, II. 250. Vireoninæ … Pachycephala … Thickhead.
1890. Victorian Stat., Game Act, Sched. iii. (Morris), Thick-heads. [Close season] From the first day of August to the twentieth day of December.
1894. Newton, Dict. Birds, 621. Native-Thrush, Pachycephala olivacea (Thickhead). Ibid. (1896), 958. The name Thickhead is … given in other parts of the world to very different birds, and in South Africa especially to Œdicnemus capensis..., the Stone-Curlew of that country.
