Loggerheads

Origin of: Loggerheads

Loggerheads

To be at loggerheads with someone is to be in dispute or conflict and the expression dates from the late 17th century. Tracing it back, in Shakespeare’s time, a ‘logger’ was simply a block of wood used for hobbling horses and a loggerhead simply meant wooden head and was used as a metaphor for a stupid person, synonymous with blockhead, which also dates from around this time, i.e. the late 16th century. Shakespeare used the word loggerhead to mean a stupid person in several of his works, including Love’s Labour Lost, The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. By the mid-17th century, however, loggerhead had also become the name given to an iron-headed instrument with a long wooden handle that was used in melting pitch and tar. These instruments were frequently used in disputes between disgruntled workers, who were then said to be ‘at loggerheads’. Thus, the expression to be at loggerheads dates from around this time, c. 1680, long after Shakespeare’s use of the word as a stupid person had fallen away. See also Blockhead.