1. One who has a flat head; spec. a member of a tribe of North American Indians named from their supposed practice of flattening their children’s heads artificially.
The tribe now commonly known by this appellation is the Selish or Hopilpo; but ‘they do not flatten the heads of their children, and appear never to have done so; the name Flathead being at first applied to them by mistake’ (Encycl. Amer., 1886).
1837. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), IV. 225. There are flat-heads there [Sierra Leone] as in other countries; but at the bottom of the whole, is the longing to use the flat-heads for improper purposes.
1837. W. Irving, Capt. Bonneville, I. 121. The Flathead levelled his piece, and brought the Blackfoot to the ground.
1841. Catlin, N. Amer. Ind. (ed. 2), II. 110. The Chinooks … correctly come under the name of Flat-Heads, as they are almost the only people who strictly adhere to the custom of squeezing and flattening the head.
1862. D. Wilson, Preh. Man (1876), II. xxi. 221. The strange practice of American Flatheads far to the north-east of the Altai chain.
2. Australia. The local name for a fish of the genus Ceratodus.
1832. Bischoff, Van Diemen’s Land, ii. 32. The market of Hobart Town is principally supplied from the Derwent, with small rock cod, flat-heads, and a fish called the perch, and various others.
1852. Mundy, Our Antipodes, viii. 195. Those who engage in the sport [of fishing] often return with a good basket of schnappers and flatheads—perhaps a rock-cod or two; and with every bit of skin burnt off their noses and chins.
3. U.S. ‘A snake which flattens its head, as a species of Heterodon’ (Cent. Dict.).
1888. Fanny D. Bergen, Animal and Plant Lore, in Pop. Sci. Monthly, XXXIII. Sept., 660. The blow-snake of Illinois is variously known in other localities as hog-nose, flat-head, viper, and puff-adder.
4. Arch. An ornament of an archivolt with a flat uncarved surface.
1883. Mollett, Dict. Art & Archæol., Flat-heads, an ornament peculiar to the Romano-Byzantine period, which decorates archivolts.
B. attrib. Having a flat head or top.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 878/1. Flat-head Nail. A forged nail with a round, flat head and a light, rounded, pointed body.
1891. John R. Spears, Odd American Homes, in Scribner’s Mag., X. Sept., 311/1. The flat-head houses of Brooklyn—two stories high in front and three in the rear.
