Meaning
The performer or act billed at the very top of a show, the one the programme is built around and who closes the night; more generally, the biggest name in any line-up, festival or event. Standard show-business vocabulary for comedians, musicians and DJs alike. Show-business neutral and generally enthusiastic; it carries star billing and no negative sense. Regional use: General English (American origin).
Origin
The word is 'headline' plus the agent suffix '-er', and both of its early senses belong to the 1890s. Etymonline records 'headliner' for a person who writes newspaper headlines from 1891, and for a star performer from 1896, five years after 'headline' itself took on its newspaper meaning (1890). The performer sense rests on vaudeville billing practice: the act whose name printers set at the head of the bill in the largest type was the headliner, and the Wikipedia article on headliners likewise traces the term to the 1890s, noting the British music-hall equivalent 'top of the bill'. Whether the 1896 sense grew directly out of the 1891 newspaper coinage or independently from 'headline' is not settled in the sources; what is documented is the date and the top-of-the-bill image. The verb 'to headline' and the compound 'headline act' came later.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- co-headliner
- headline act
- headline the show
- top-billed act
Usage Examples
- The festival's headliner does not take the stage until midnight, after four opening acts.
- She went from open-mic regular to theatre headliner in under three years.
- The headliner at this year's conference is a Nobel laureate who almost never accepts invitations.