heft

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See also: Heft and Hëft

English[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

  • Audio (US)(file)
  • IPA(key): /hɛft/
  • Rhymes: -ɛft

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English heft, derived from Middle English heven (“to lift, heave”), equivalent to heave +‎ -t (“-th”). For development, compare English weft from weave, cleft from cleave, theft from thieve, etc.

Alternative forms[edit]

Noun[edit]

heft (countable and uncountable, plural hefts)

  1. (uncountable) Weight.
    • 1859, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford:
      a man of his age and heft
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
      Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.
  2. Heaviness, the feel of weight; heftiness.
    A high quality hammer should have good balance and heft.
    • 2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face]”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      Unlike most moons of the solar system, ours has the heft, the gravitational gravitas, to pull itself into a sphere.
    • 2021 March 30, J. B. MacKinnon, “An Entire Group of Whales Has Somehow Escaped Human Attention”, in The Atlantic‎[2]:
      he skull was an awkward armload. Bizarrely, its size, shape, and long, narrow bill brought to mind the head of Big Bird from Sesame Street, but with none of bird-bone’s lightness: It had heft and density.
  3. (figurative) Influence; importance.
    • 2017 April 10, Jonathan Freedland, “The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley”, in The Guardian‎[3]:
      Put more baldly, the reason why Republicans and British Conservatives started giving each other copies of Atlas Shrugged in the 80s was that Rand seemed to grant intellectual heft to the prevailing ethos of the time.
  4. The act or effort of heaving; violent strain or exertion.
  5. (US, dated, colloquial) The greater part or bulk of anything.
    • 1865, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, The Gayworthys: a Story of Threads and Thrums:
      The turkey's nest was islanded with a fragrant swath , the “heft” of the crop noted and rejoiced over.
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

heft (third-person singular simple present hefts, present participle hefting, simple past and past participle hefted)

  1. (transitive) To lift up; especially, to lift something heavy.
    He hefted the sack of concrete into the truck.
  2. (transitive) To test the weight of something by lifting it.
  3. (obsolete) past participle of heave
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2[edit]

From English and Scots dialect, ultimately from Old Norse hefð (“possession, statute of limitations, prescriptive right”) (compare Old Norse hefða (“to acquire prescriptive rights”)), from Proto-Germanic *habiþō, equivalent to have +‎ -t (“-th”). Cognate with Scots heft, heff (“an accustomed pasture”).

Noun[edit]

heft (plural hefts)

  1. (Northern England) A piece of mountain pasture to which a farm animal has become hefted (accustomed).
  2. An animal that has become hefted thus.
  3. (West of Ireland) Poor condition in sheep caused by mineral deficiency.

Verb[edit]

heft (third-person singular simple present hefts, present participle hefting, simple past and past participle hefted)

  1. (transitive, Northern England and Scotland) To make (a farm animal, especially a flock of sheep) accustomed and attached to an area of mountain pasture.

Etymology 3[edit]

From German Heft (“notebook”).

Noun[edit]

heft (plural hefts)

  1. A number of sheets of paper fastened together, as for a notebook.
  2. A part of a serial publication.
    • 1900, The Nation, volume 70:
      The size of "hefts" will depend on the material requiring attention, and the annual volume is to cost about 15 marks.

Dutch[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle Dutch hefte, from Old Dutch *hefti, from Proto-West Germanic *haftī, from Proto-Germanic *haftiją. Forms with -cht- were dominant in Middle Dutch.

Noun[edit]

heft n (plural heften, diminutive heftje n)

  1. handle of a knife or other tool, haft, hilt
  2. (metaphor, used absolutely: het heft) control, charge
    Synonyms: gevest, handgreep
    Zij heeft hier het heft in handen. ― She runs the show here.
Alternative forms[edit]
Derived terms[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb[edit]

heft

  1. inflection of heffen:
    1. second/third-person singular present indicative
    2. (archaic) plural imperative

Middle English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From heven, on the model of weven and weft.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

heft (plural heftis)

  1. (Late Middle English, rare) weight

Descendants[edit]

  • English: heft
  • ⇒ Yola: heifteen, heiftem

References[edit]

Northern Kurdish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Proto-Iranian *haptá, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *saptá, from Proto-Indo-European *septḿ̥. Compare Avestan 𐬵𐬀𐬞𐬙𐬀 (hapta), Persian هفت (haft), Ossetian авд (avd), Pashto اووه (uwə).

Pronunciation[edit]

Numeral[edit]

heft

  1. seven

Norwegian Nynorsk[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From the verb hefte.

Noun[edit]

heft n (definite singular heftet, indefinite plural heft, definite plural hefta)

  1. encumberment

Verb[edit]

heft

  1. imperative of hefta

References[edit]

Scots[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old Norse hefð.

Noun[edit]

heft

  1. A piece of mountain pasture to which a farm animal has become hefted.
  2. An animal that has become hefted thus.

Verb[edit]

heft (third-person singular simple present hefts, present participle heftin, simple past heftit, past participle heftit)

  1. (transitive) The process by which a farm animal becomes accustomed to an area of mountain pasture.
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