Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Weight; heaviness; bulk.
- intransitive verb To lift (something) in order to judge or estimate its weight.
- intransitive verb To hoist (something); heave.
- intransitive verb To have a given weight; weigh.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A dwelling; a place of residence.
- noun A part or number of a serial publication, as of a magazine; a division of a work which is being issued in parts.
- noun A note-book.
- noun The act of heaving or retching; violent strain or exertion; effort.
- noun Weight; heaviness.
- noun The greater or weightier part of anything; the bulk; the gist.
- noun Need; emergency.
- noun Command; restraint.
- noun Same as
haft . - To dwell.
- To familiarize with a place or an employment; attach or cause to become attached by long usage.
- An early modern English preterit and past participle of heave.
- To heave up.
- To try the weight of.
- To weigh.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete The act or effort of heaving; violent strain or exertion.
- noun colloq. Weight; ponderousness.
- noun Colloq. U. S. The greater part or bulk of anything.
- noun obsolete Same as
haft , n. - noun A number of sheets of paper fastened together, as for a notebook; also, a part of a serial publication.
- transitive verb To heave up; to raise aloft.
- transitive verb colloq. To prove or try the weight of by raising.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable
Weight . - noun
Heaviness , thefeel of weight. - noun Northern England A piece of
mountain pasture to which afarm animal has become hefted. - noun An animal that has become hefted thus.
- noun Poor condition in sheep caused by
mineral deficiency . - verb transitive To
lift up ; especially, to lift somethingheavy . - verb transitive To
test theweight of something bylifting it. - verb transitive (of a
farm animal , especially a flock of sheep) To become accustomed and attached to an area of mountainpasture . - verb obsolete past participle of to
heave .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the property of being large in mass
- verb lift or elevate
- verb test the weight of something by lifting it
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The manager continues to see value in heft, although muscle can be accompanied by subtlety.
Kevin Davies gets surprise England call-up for Montenegro game Kevin McCarra 2010
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It didn't compare in heft to what a Marine carried on an amphibious landing.
Sulfur Island P. J. O'Rourke 2004
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He bade the Scrivener write the tale of the Men of the Sickle at an hundred and a half, and his folk fared past the War-leader joyously, being one half of them bowmen; and fell shooters they were; the other half were girt with swords, and bore withal long ashen staves armed with great blades curved inwards, which weapon they called heft-sax.
The Roots of the Mountains; Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale William Morris 1865
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True, as Jaffe predicts, hardly anyone is really making any money; most only the people who are, indeed, are the old usual suspects with the big label heft behind them.
Eurogamer 2010
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Larry Bird, Danny Ainge (who played with Petrovic in Portland) and other former NBA stars are interviewed, but the heft comes from the Croatian-born Kukoc and Radja.
SI.com 2010
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Don't write more words than you need to add "heft" - people don't have time to waste and fluff makes you look bad - but if you need 500 words to sell the product or service, write 500.
WebProNews Feed 2009
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Don't write more words than you need to add "heft" - people don't have time to waste and fluff makes you look bad - but if you need 500 words to sell the product or service, write 500.
WebProNews Feed Matt Tuens 2009
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Don't write more words than you need to add "heft" - people don't have time to waste and fluff makes you look bad - but if you need 500 words to sell the product or service, write 500.
WebProNews Feed 2009
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The prospect of the BBC “using its massive heft is likely to upset UK media and Internet companies, which have often complained that the corporation – funded by a mandatory tax on UK television households totalling nearly 3 billion pounds ($5.4 billion) – has encroached on activities in the private sector,” says the story, adding”
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Danson, as the constantly stoned and seemingly monstrously self-absorbed magazine editor George, gives the show weight and heft, which is hard to see in the first several episodes because George appears to be a flibbertigibbet.
Lance Mannion: 2009
vendingmachine commented on the word heft
"hefting – also known as heafing in this part of the country, but known as many other things across the UK.
I’m no expert on hefting but the way I understand it to work, from a friend who does know, is that when shepherds want to establish a new flock, they take the sheep up onto the moorland where they want them to graze and they constrain them on that land. This is sometimes done with fencing, but is also done by physical shepherding. The flock gets to know where it can, and can’t, go because of the constraints.
Eventually the shepherd removes the constraint, but the sheep don’t drift off. They stay where they have been hefted. They’ve learnt to live within their current constraints.
Once a flock has been established within its heft, the shepherd can add new sheep to the flock and they will take on the heft of the rest of the sheep, as long as too many fresh ideas aren’t introduced. The hefting is passed from generation to generation without the need for the constraints to be put back in place. That’s how strong the constraints are in the minds of the rest of the flock.
We’re not dissimilar to sheep. We pick a way of doing things, or a technology, based on what our tribe is doing. Having chosen a technology, we stay with it, we invest in it, and we live within its constraints. We become comfortable in our place of pasture." --Technology Perspectives.
August 21, 2016