Word.ws English Dictionary

heartburn

/ˈhɑːtˌbɜːn/US/ˈhɑɹtˌbɝn/

heartburn noun: a burning pain in the chest that is caused by stomach acid entering the gullet.

Noun

heartburn (countable and uncountable, plural heartburns)

  1. A burning pain in the chest that is caused by stomach acid entering the gullet.
    • Coordinate term: cardiodynia
  2. (figuratively) annoyance, heartache, or similar feelings.
    • ”There’s some heartburn about the fact the message is getting stepped on,” said Mark McKinnon, Bush’s campaign media strategist.2001, J. Michael Willard, The Accidental Headline, →ISBN, page 80
    • America’s policy of containing both the Soviet Union and its Chinese ally did cause some heartburn in Tokyo.2003, Robyn Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia: The Search for Equilibrium, →ISBN, page 92

heartburn meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

heartburn in Tamil

pain caused by stomach acid
நெஞ்செரிவு neñcerivu

heartburn in Bengali

pain caused by stomach acid
বুকজ্বালা bukojjala

heartburn in Malayalam

നെഞ്ചെരിച്ചിൽ

heartburn in Kannada

ಗುಂಡಿಗೆ ಉರಿ, ಎದೆಯುರಿ, ಎರ್ದೆಬೆಂಕಿ
More languagesFewer languages
heartburn in Arabic
حُرْقَة الْمَعِدَة, حموضة معوية
heartburn in Indonesian
nyeri ulu hati
heartburn in Persian
سوزش سر دل
heartburn in Vietnamese
ợ nóng

Examples of heartburn in a sentence

  • "And that's really what I have heartburn about."2005 December 14, Micheline Maynard, Jeremy W. Peters, “Protests Well Up as Delphi Workers Ponder Cuts”, in The New York Times:
  • Back in Thailand, meantime, the CIA felt relatively little heartburn over the congressional rebuff.2013, Kenneth Conboy, The Cambodian Wars, →ISBN, page 268:

Synonyms of heartburn

All synonyms of heartburn

Forms of heartburn

pluralheartburns
alternative formheart-burn

Origin of heartburn

From Middle English hertbryne, herte-bren (“lust", also "heartburn”, literally “heart burn”), equivalent to heart + burn. Compare also Middle English herte-brennyng (“anger, bitterness, heartburn”, literally “burning of/in the heart, heart-burning”). Compare also Ancient Greek καρδιαλγία (kardialgía), from καρδία (kardía, “heart”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”). From being a burning sensation near the location of the heart in the chest.

Questions about heartburn

What does heartburn mean?
Heartburn means a burning pain in the chest that is caused by stomach acid entering the gullet.
What is heartburn in Tamil?
Heartburn in Tamil is நெஞ்செரிவு (neñcerivu). See Heartburn meaning in Tamil.
How do you use heartburn in a sentence?
"And that's really what I have heartburn about."
What part of speech is heartburn?
Heartburn is a noun.
How do you pronounce heartburn?
Heartburn is pronounced /ˈhɑːtˌbɜːn/ (UK).
What is the plural of heartburn?
The plural of heartburn is heartburns.

Words near heartburn in the dictionary

  1. heartbreaks
  2. heartbroke
  3. heartbroken
  4. heartbrokenly
  5. heartbrokenness
  6. heartburn
  7. heartburned
  8. heartburning
  9. heartburnings
  10. heartburns
  11. heartcare

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heartburn (page history and authors); heartburn (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); heartburn (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-heartburn.wav.

Cite this entry: “heartburn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heartburn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.