Word.ws English Dictionary

heft

UK/hɛft/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/heft/

heft noun: the feel of the weight of something; heaviness. Also the simple past and past participle of heave.

Noun (1)

heft (countable and uncountable, plural hefts)

  1. The feel of the weight of something; heaviness.
    • A high quality hammer should have good balance and heft.
    • But Durindan at laſt fell vvith ſuch heft, / Full on the circle of Rogeros ſhield, / That halfe vvay through the Argent byrd it cleft, / And pierſt the core of male [i.e., mail] that vvas vvithin, / And found a paſſage to the verie skin.1591, [Ludovico Ariosto], “The XXX. Booke”, in Iohn Haringtõ [i.e., John Harington], transl., Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse, […], London: […] Richard Field […], →OCLC, stanza 51, page...
    Synonyms:
    heftiness
  2. (US, dialectal, dated except UK) The force exerted by an object due to gravitation; weight.
    • The man had been carried out of the yard while the fire was still burning; […] Public opinion was much divided, some holding that it would go hard with a man of his age and heft; but the common belief seemed to be that he was of that sort "as'd take a deal o'killin'," and that he would be none the...1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], “Englebourn Village”, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC, page 302
    • "Look at the heft of 'n [a baby]," said the proud father, "entirely drags ye down, Miss Sybil, 'e do."1888–1889, Maxwell Gray [pseudonym; Mary Gleed Tuttiett], “Light and Shade”, in The Reproach of Annesley. […], volume I, London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., […], published 1889, →OCLC, part III, page...
  3. (figuratively) Graveness, seriousness; gravity.
    • He's got a good voice, and reads well; but come to a sermon—wal, ain't no gret heft in't.1878, Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Illumination”, in Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives, New York, N.Y.: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, →OCLC, page 35
  4. (figuratively) Importance, influence; weight.
    • Put more baldly, the reason why Republicans and British Conservatives started giving each other copies of Atlas Shrugged in the 80s was that [Ayn] Rand seemed to grant intellectual heft to the prevailing ethos of the time.2017 April 10, Jonathan Freedland, “The new age of Ayn Rand: How she won over Trump and Silicon Valley”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC...
  5. (US, dated, informal) The greater part of something; the bulk, the mass.
    • The turkey's nest was islanded with a fragrant swath,—the "heft" of the crop noted and rejoiced over,—[…]1865, [Adeline Dutton Train Whitney], “The Secret at the Hartshornes”, in The Gayworthys: A Story of Threads and Thrums. […], Boston, Mass.: [A. K.] Loring, […], →OCLC, page 49
    • He run to South America or somewheres, taking the heft of the firm's money with him.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 7
  6. (UK, dialectal) An act of lifting; a lift.
    • Deigning no answer, the sturdy parson seized the bigger of the two ash staves, and laying the butt of the other for a fulcrum, gave the stuck wheel such a powerful heft, that the whole cart rattled, and the crates began to dance.1882, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, “Parson Short”, in Christowell. A Dartmoor Tale. […], volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 35
    • It was a tremendous heft to raise the boat on to the wall and push it over, but somehow she managed it; […]1888, Paul Cushing, “A Gust of the Soul and⸺”, in The Blacksmith of Voe […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1892, →OCLC, page 189
  7. (obsolete) An act of heaving (lifting with difficulty); an instance of violent exertion or straining.
    • [I]f one preſent / Th'abhor'd Ingredient [a spider in a drink] to his eye, make knovvne / Hovv he hath drunke, he cracks his gorge, his ſides / VVith violent Hefts: I haue drunke, and ſeene the Spider.c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • The socket of the rim lock tore off to one good heft of the shoulder, and we were in.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 82

Verb (1)

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

  1. (UK, US, dialectal, informal, transitive) To lift or lift up (something, especially a heavy object).
    • He hefted the sack of concrete into the truck.
    • […] Bevis was to "heft" his gun to the shoulder, and only to press it there sufficiently to feel that the butt touched him.1882, Richard Jefferies, “Shooting with Double-barrels”, in Bevis: The Story of a Boy […], volume III, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 254
    Synonyms:
    hoist
  2. (UK, US, dialectal, informal, transitive) To test the weight of (something) by lifting.
    • [H]e took up a root or two [potatoes] here and there, and "hefted it," (that is to say, poised it carefully to judge the weight, as one does a letter for the post) and then stroked the sleek skin lovingly, and put it down gingerly for fear of any bruise.1894, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, “The Potato-field”, in Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills, London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company […], →OCLC, page 58
    1. (UK, US, dialectal, figuratively, informal, transitive) To evaluate or test (someone or something).
      • Sim's ben to college, and he's putty smart and chipper. Come to heft him, tho', he don't weigh much 'longside o' Parson Cushing.1878, Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Illumination”, in Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives, New York, N.Y.: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, →OCLC, pages 34–35
  3. (UK, US, dialectal, informal, intransitive) To have (substantial) weight; to weigh.
    • "[I]t's yellow! is it gold?" / "My!" exclaimed his mother, weighing it in her hand, "I do believe it is. Brass never would heft so much, and would be green. Bless me, Wat, this is a find! Where ever did you come by it? In the gutters, do you say?"1893, Charlotte M[ary] Yonge, “The Hoard”, in The Treasures in the Marshes, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Whittaker, […], →OCLC, page 12

Noun (2)

heft (plural hefts)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) A piece of pastureland which farm animals (chiefly cattle or sheep) have become accustomed to.
    • [S]he came to fetch her [bairn] out of ill haft and waur guiding.1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter VI, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume II, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.]...
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) A flock or group of farm animals (chiefly cattle or sheep) which have become accustomed to a particular piece of pastureland.

Verb (2)

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

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) To accustom (a flock or group of farm animals, chiefly cattle or sheep) to a piece of pastureland.
    • For I had been "hefting" (as the business is called in our Galloway land) a double score of lambs which had just been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty upland pastures. Now it is the nature of sheep to return if they can to their mother-hill, or, at least, to stray...1898, S[amuel] R[utherford] Crockett, “The Year Terrible”, in The Standard Bearer, London: Methuen and Co. […], →OCLC, page 6
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, figuratively) To establish or settle (someone) in an occupation or place of residence.
    • [I]t may be as well that Alan and you do not meet till he is hefted as it were to his new calling.1824 June, [Walter Scott], “Letter IX. Alexander Fairford, W.S. to Mr Darsie Latimer.”, in Redgauntlet, […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co....
  3. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, figuratively) To establish or plant (something) firmly in a place; to fix, to root, to settle.
    • […] I hae heard him say, that the root of the matter was mair deeply hafted in that wild muirland parish than in the Canogate of Edinburgh.1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter II, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume IV, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.]...
  4. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) Of a thing: to establish or settle itself in a place.

Verb (3)

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

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) To cause (milk) to be held in a cow's udder until the latter becomes hard and swollen, either by not milking the cow or by stopping up the teats, to make the cow look healthy; also, to cause (a cow) to have an udder in this condition.
    • You also see the impropriety of hefting or holding the milk in cows until the udder is distended much beyond its ordinary size, for the sake of shewing its utmost capacity for holding milk, a device which all cow-dealers, and indeed every one who has a cow for sale in a market, scrupulously uses....1844, Henry Stephens, “Of Cows Calving, and of Calves”, in The Book of the Farm, […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, paragraph 2106, page 460
    • The heavy udders of hefted cows trailed on the ground, dripping milk on the greensward. Stray cattle ate the rich grass.1922, Patrick MacGill, “The Inaugural Dinner”, in Lanty Hanlon: A Comedy of Irish Life, Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland: Brandon Book Publishers, published 1983, →ISBN, section III, page 259
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, broadly, dialectal) To cause (urine) to be held in a person's bladder.

Noun (3)

heft (plural hefts)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) A number of sheets of paper fastened together, as to form a book or a notebook.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, US, dialectal, informal) A part of a serial publication; a fascicle, an issue, a number.
    • Such an organ is now to be published by the house of J[oseph] Ricker, in Giessen, Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik, edited by Dr. Mark Lidzbarki.^([sic]) […] The size of the "hefts" will depend on the material requiring attention, and the annual volume is to cost about 15 marks.1900 January 25, “Notes”, in The Nation, volume 70, number 1804, New York, N.Y.: Nation Associates, →ISSN, →OCLC, page LXX, column 1

Also used as

heft is also the simple past and past participle of heave.

Examples of heft in a sentence

  • I pictured him doing violence to his better nature, and only wanting a good heft of circumstance to enable him to throw off his load of deviltry.1888, Paul Cushing, “The Plateau Mine”, in The Blacksmith of Voe […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1892, →OCLC, page...
  • Unlike most moons of the solar system, ours has the heft to pull itself into a sphere.2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal...
  • 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.2021 March 30, J[ames] B[ernard] MacKinnon, “An Entire Group of Whales has Somehow Escaped Human Attention”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor...
  • And here they must make the long portage, and the boys sweat in the sun; / And they heft and pack, and they haul and track, and each must do his trick; […]1912, Robert W[illiam] Service, “Athabaska Dick”, in Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, →OCLC, stanza 1, page 46:

All 27 example sentences with heft

Synonyms of heft

Forms of heft

Noun
pluralhefts
alternative formhaft
Verb
third-person singular presenthefts
present participlehefting
past participlehefted
pasthefted

Origin of heft

The noun is derived from Late Middle English heft (“heaviness; something heavy, a weight”), from heven (“to lift, raise”) + -th (suffix denoting a condition, quality, state of being, etc., forming nouns), by analogy with the development of weft from weven (modern English weave), etc. (also compare words like cleft from cleave, and theft from thieve, where the development occurred in Old English or earlier languages). The English word is analysable as heave + -t (suffix forming nouns from verbs). The verb is probably derived from the noun.

From heave + -t (suffix forming the past and/or past participle forms of verbs).

The noun is borrowed from Scots heft, haft (“pasture which sheep are familiar with; attachment of sheep to a pasture; number of sheep grazing on such a pasture; (obsolete) place of residence; situation”), probably from Old Norse hefð (“occupation; possession; prescriptive right”), from hafa (“to have; to keep, retain”), from Proto-Germanic *habjaną (“to have; to hold”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap-, *keh₂p- (“to hold; to seize”). The verb is borrowed from Scots heft (“to cause (cattle or sheep) to become familiar with a pasture; of animals: to become familiar with a pasture; (figurative) of a person: to become settled in an occupation or place”), probably from Old Norse hefða (“to acquire prescriptive rights”), from hefð (noun): see above. Both the noun and verb may have been influenced by Scots heft (“(noun) handle of an implement, haft; (verb) to fit (an implement) with a handle”).

Words formed from heft

Words that rhyme with heft

Questions about heft

What does heft mean?
Heft means the feel of the weight of something; heaviness.
How do you use heft in a sentence?
I pictured him doing violence to his better nature, and only wanting a good heft of circumstance to enable him to throw off his load of deviltry.
What part of speech is heft?
Heft can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce heft?
Heft is pronounced /hɛft/ (UK).
What is the plural of heft?
The plural of heft is hefts.

Words near heft in the dictionary

  1. Hefneresque
  2. Hefnerian
  3. Hefners
  4. hefs
  5. hefsek
  6. heft
  7. heftable
  8. hefted
  9. hefter
  10. hefters
  11. heftier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heft (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.

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