1603 W. Shakespeare Hamlet i. v. 175 With Armes, incombred thus, or this head shake, Or by pronouncing some vndoubtfull phrase.

1829 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. June 737/1 He asked the unhappy man some question of his welfare, and seemed satisfied with the head-shake and inarticulately muttered replies of the again drooping wretch.

1879 L. Wingfield My Lords of Strogue I. i. 16 ‘How long will it last?’ asked Curran, with a dubious headshake.

1914 W. De Morgan When Ghost meets Ghost xvi. 166 ‘Perhaps he was her son,’ said Mrs. Prichard. But this surmise only prolonged the headshake.

1992 J. Torrington Swing Hammer Swing! xxxiv. 309 ‘Up yours too, dipstick,’ I said in reaction to her scowls and headshakes.

2002 C. Voigt Bad Girls in Love vii. 109 Margalo asked, ‘Did you hear about Heather's party?’ A headshake.

1956 Wilson Bull. 68 275 Preliminary head shake.—In the Mallard..and the Black Duck the males assemble in groups for social display.

1958 Ecology 39 759/2 Many of the movements in this attack behavior [of the fish] are similar to courtship but the spasmodic headshakes are absent.

1963 Science 7 June 1081/3 Evasive gaze implies submission. The gorillas formalize the latter into a side-to-side head shake.

1972 Field & Stream Oct. 150 The fish was thrashing now on the surface... The tremendous shock of those head shakes ran up the line, threatening to wrench arms from their sockets.

2003 R. D. Bartlett & P. Bartlett Iguanas (ed. 2) 55/1 The courtship involves push-ups, head shakes, bobs and nods, and repeated dewlap distensions.