In gardening, removed dead or faded flowers from a plant to encourage new blooms; also past tense of deadhead (to travel without payment or follow a band).
'Deadhead' as a verb in gardening dates to the mid-20th century, meaning to remove the 'dead' flower 'heads.' Combined with past tense '-ed'.
Deadheading flowers seems to defy logic—you're making the plant look worse by cutting off the flowers—until you realize you're sacrificing the pretty dead flowers so the plant makes more pretty live flowers. It's gardening's version of tough love.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.