a.
1. Of an animal: Having a head shaped somewhat like that of a stag.
1683. Lond. Gaz., No. 1802/4. A Chesnut Nag, 14 hands high,… Stag-headed.
18[?]. Young’s Annals Agric., XXX. 333, in Britten, Old Country Words (1880), 110. The horn is found neither drooping too low, nor rising too high, nor with points inverted, called here [Somerset] stag-headed.
2. Of a tree or forest of trees: Having the topmost branches bare and withered.
1769. Phil. Trans., LIX. 28. This grove of chesnuts … begin to decay very much at the tops, being what the woodwards term stag-headed.
1790. W. H. Marshall, Midland Counties, II. 441. Stagheaded, as an old overgrown oak; having the stumps of boughs standing out of its top.
1843. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., IV. II. 396. Sometimes trees, which at first were good bearers, become stag-headed and unfruitful.
1882. Garden, 14 Jan., 27/3. Some oaks are old and stag-headed at 100 years, while others are vigorous at 300 years.
