Gateshead

From Middle English Gatesheved (c. 1190), from Old English *Gāteshēafod, first mentioned by Bede in Latin in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People as ad caput caprae (at the goat's head), meaning a headland or hill frequented by (wild) goats. Both Latin and English names may be calques of a Brythonic predecessor formed from Proto-Brythonic *gaβr, from Proto-Celtic *gabros, and might have been the Romano-British fort of Gabrosentum.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡeɪtsˌhɛd/

Gateshead

1. A town in Tyne and Wear, in north-east England. Found upon the southern bank of the Tyne.
   • 1830, John Yelloly, Sequel to a Paper on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases, and on the Concretions to Which Such Diseases Give Rise, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 120

     Of this number, 64 belonged to the above district, including Newcastle, with the addition of Gateshead, which lies on the opposite bank of the Tyne, in the county of Durham; and these afforded 2.13 cases per annum, which, as the population was 213,000, gave one case for every 100,000 inhabitants.

2. A metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear formed in 1974, with its headquarters in the town.

• Gatehead

• gets ahead, headgates, headstage, stagehead