Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition

(hĕdz′man)

Noun.

;

pl.

Headsmen

(-men)

An executioner who cuts off heads.

Dryden.

Noun.

hed'sman. One that cuts off heads; an executioner. [Unusual.]

headsman ‎(plural headsmen)

An executioner whose method of dispatching the condemned is decapitation.
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, I.40:
  And of those base-minded jesters or buffons, some have beene seene, that even at the point of death would never leave their jesting and scoffing. He whom the heads-man threw off from the Gallowes cried out, ‘Row the Gally,’ which was his ordinarie by-word.
- 1885, Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado
  And made him Headsman, for we said, / "Who's next to be decapited / Cannot cut off another's head / Until he's cut his own off […]"