deadheader

deadheader (plural deadheaders)

1. One who removes the dead remains of blossoms from plants.
   • 1992, George Schenk, Gardening With Friends, page 210:

     Instead, she is a weeder, actually for enjoyment ("That's when I get some of my best thinking done"), a keen harvester of flowers for the house, and a merciless deadheader of perennials in the autumn.

   • 1998, Tracy DiSabato-Aust, The Well-tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques, →ISBN:

     Take care if deadheading in the evening when the flowers have just folded down as bees seem to enjoy resting in them at this time and may give the deadheader a stinging surprise.

   • 2002, Miss Read, Gossip from Thrush Green, →ISBN:

     I'm just the deadheader of roses and pansies—a very lowly assistant gardener.

2. A non-paying passenger.
   • 1947, The New Republic - Volume 117, Part 1, page 18:

     There's company rules against riders. I told him tonight he's gonna have a deadheader; all he wanted to know was you gonna have coffee money.

   • 2001, Kathy Reichs, Fatal Voyage: A Novel, →ISBN, page 98:

     A septuagenarian deadheader? A senior citizen stowaway? Unlikely.

   • 2007, Doug Morris, From the Flight Deck: Plane Talk and Sky Science, →ISBN, page 7:

     When aircraft are swapped, a pilot might travel as a deadheader on the flight he or she was originally scheduled to fly.

3. A scheduled trip to move a vehicle that has no cargo and no passengers.
   • 1995, Journal of American Indian Education - Volumes 35-37, page 53:

     From Granite City, I think it was, we rode a deadheader to Minneapolis.

   • 1988, Jane Stern, Michael Stern, A taste of America, →ISBN, page 41:

     Next to the cash register, a bulletin board was thumbtacked with notes from deadheaders who needed loads heading west, and shippers looking for a reefer (refrigerated truck) going down to Florida.

   • 1999, Dana Stabenow, Hunter's Moon, →ISBN, page 4:

     It had been the deteriorating remains of a defunct gold mine when George Perry stumbled across it on a deadheader back from a freight trip/visit to a girlfriend in McGrath in June about twelve years back.

   • 2014, Ian McDonald, Ares Express, →ISBN:

     Any road, they throw me off at High Plains and then I hitch a ride on some shit deadheader across Chryse because Mr Engineer he's expecting to ride the whole rig with me hanging off.

4. One who does not work very hard at his or her job.
   • 1959, J. J. Wuerthner, The businessman's guide to practical politics, page 143:

     ...were always the "infamous machine" or the "bosses' candidate" or the "payroll deadheaders and racketeers."

   • 2013, Matthew L. Basso, Meet Joe Copper, →ISBN:

     If before the war better-skilled smeltermen had little recourse against deadheaders, during the war they joined with foremen, itself a telling alliance, in using patriotic expectations to discipline those they believed were illegitimate deadheaders.

5. A racing pigeon that will not leave when released.
   • 1989, The American Racing Pigeon News - Volume 105, page 26:

     Don does this to catch "Deadheaders" - birds which circle the wrong way and won't leave the release site. By his precise records, Don can remove deadheaders by a process of elimination.