heil

/haɪl/

heil verb: to greet with a Sieg Heil.

Verb

heil (third-person singular simple present heils, present participle heiling, simple past and past participle heiled)

To greet with a Sieg Heil.
- John Smith: Our deal stands. / Wilhelm Goertzmann: North America is yours. / John Smith: And the rest of the Reich is yours. / Wilhelm Goertzmann: You have complete autonomy. / John Smith: Heil Goertzmann! (performs Nazi salute) / Wilhelm Goertzmann: Heil Smith! (performs Nazi salute)2019 November 19, Mark Richard, David Scarpa, “For Want of a Nail”, in The Man in the High Castle (TV series), season 4, episode 9, spoken by John Smith and Wilhelm Goertzmann (Rufus Sewell and Marc...

Noun

heil (plural heils)

A Sieg Heil.
- Nazi “heils,” Nazi songs and Nazi swastikas are distasteful to most democracy-loving citizens.1937, Pathfinder, volume 44, Farm Journal, Incorporated, page 15, column 1
- Health, Hitler, heils, and hatred are the “four H’s” used by United States Nazis to prevent Americanization of children whose parents are members of the German-American Bund.1938, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Hearings Before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-Fifth Congress, Third...

Proper noun capitalized: Heil

Heil (plural Heils)

A surname from German.

Examples of heil in a sentence

[…] who simply walked out of the camp dressed as German guards, duplicating Nazi heils, the goosestep and other mannerisms.1946, The Polish Review and East European Affairs, volume 6, page 6, column 2:
When they were finished, they raised their arms in the salute Hider stole from Mussolini, and thundered their heils to the heavens.1991, Margot Abbott, The Last Innocent Hour, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 145:
To look at, the men could be singing, marching, stomping over the flopping remains of Shlomo’s father, mother, brothers, giving their heils, and Shlomo now hated them.1993, John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945, BasicBooks, →ISBN, page 103:
Hitler’s werewolves, the colonel called them, and they saluted with their heils and expected victory.2013, Carrie Vaughn, “Unternehmen Werwolf”, in Paula Guran, editor, Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, Prime Books, →ISBN, page 90:

Forms of heil

Verb
third-person singular present	heils
present participle	heiling
past participle	heiled
past	heiled
Noun
plural	heils
Proper noun
plural	Heils

Origin of heil

Borrowed from German Heil, from Middle High German heil, from Old High German heil, from Proto-West Germanic *hail, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz, from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos. Doublet of whole, hail, and hale.

As a German surname, shortened from Heinrich. As a German and Dutch surname, from the name Heila, from hail (“whole”).

Words formed from heil

Daily Heil

Phrases with heil

Words that rhyme with heil

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about heil

What does heil mean?: Heil means to greet with a Sieg Heil.
How do you use heil in a sentence?: […] who simply walked out of the camp dressed as German guards, duplicating Nazi heils, the goosestep and other mannerisms.
What part of speech is heil?: Heil can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce heil?: Heil is pronounced /haɪl/.
What is the past tense of heil?: The past tense of heil is heiled.

Words near heil in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: heil (page history and authors); Heil (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: 2026-09-02

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

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