DEFINITION
adjective
1. lacking a head or having the head reduced;
2. lacking a governing head or chief.
EXAMPLES
1. Having no head capsule, the larva is acephalous.
2. “Mouskas believes there is ample room to improve the Cyprus shipping registry including appointing a director at the Department of Merchant Shipping (DMS), which has been acephalous since Sergios Serghiou retired two and half years ago.” — From an article by Charles Savva at mondaq.com, updated December 2, 2013.
DID YOU KNOW?
The English word “acephalous” was borrowed from Medieval Latin, in which it meant “headless” and was chiefly used to describe clerics not under a bishop or lines of verse having the first foot missing or abbreviated. The fountainhead of these meanings is the Greek word “kephalē,” meaning “head.” Other English descendants of “kephalē” include “cephalic,” meaning “of or relating to the head” or “directed toward or situated on or in or near the head,” and “encephalitis,” meaning “inflammation of the brain.”
