Headway means progress or forward movement toward a goal. When you're working on a difficult project and finally start to make headway, you're moving forward after being stuck. A scientist might struggle with an experiment for weeks before making real headway on solving the problem.

The word often appears when progress has been hard to achieve. If you're reading a challenging book and tell someone you're “making headway,” you mean you're getting through it, even if slowly. When a team is making headway against a tough opponent, they're gaining ground and doing better than before.

Headway originally came from sailing and navigation, describing a ship's forward motion through water. This nautical origin explains why the word captures both movement and effort: just as a ship must push through waves and wind to make headway, people must often push through obstacles to make progress.

You might also hear headway used to describe the time gap between buses or trains on a route. If a subway line has a headway of 10 minutes, that means a train comes every 10 minutes. This usage connects to the idea of forward progress: the system keeps moving at regular intervals.