- loggerhead (n.)
- 1580s, "stupid person, blockhead," perhaps from dialectal logger "heavy block of wood" + head (n.). Later it meant "a thick-headed iron tool" (1680s), a type of cannon shot, a type of turtle (1650s). Loggerheads "fighting, fisticuffs" is from 1670s, but the exact notion is uncertain, perhaps it suggests the heavy tools used as weapons. The phrase at loggerheads "in disagreement" is first recorded 1670s.
[W]e three loggerheads be: a sentence frequently written under two heads, and the reader by repeating it makes himself the third. [Grose, "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1785]