Definition of "head of state" [head of state]

• The chief public representative of a nation having duties, privileges and responsibilities varying greatly depending on the constitutional rules; a monarch in a monarchy, and often styled president in a republic, but variations such as collegiality exist. (noun)

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• "By this time the interview had already lost all semblance of an exchange between equals — much less the deus-ex-machina quality which was the traditional attribute of an encounter between the head of state and the Commander in Chief of the Army."
• "Now Stern, the West German magazine, had hired an American handwriting expert who said that the Liibke signatures by the head of state and the Liibke signatures on concentration camp plans were made by the same hand."
• "With the UN resident coordinator Agostinho Zacarias and my OCHA colleagues Agnes Asekenye-Oonyu and Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, I am failing to get the head of state to admit the gravity of the situation in his country—that his people are in desperate need of precisely the things we offer."