heft

Meaning

Noun

1. The feel of the weight of something; heaviness.
2. The force exerted by an object due to gravitation; weight.
3. Graveness, seriousness; gravity.
4. Importance, influence; weight.
5. (informal) The greater part of something; the bulk, the mass.
6. An act of lifting; a lift.
7. (obsolete) An act of heaving (lifting with difficulty); an instance of violent exertion or straining.

Verb

1. (informal) To lift or lift up (something, especially a heavy object).
2. (informal) To test the weight of (something) by lifting.
3. (informal) To test the weight of (something) by lifting.
4. (informal) To have (substantial) weight; to weigh.

Verb

simple past and past participle of heave

Verb

1. To accustom (a flock or group of farm animals, chiefly cattle or sheep) to a piece of pastureland.
2. To establish or settle (someone) in an occupation or place of residence.
3. To establish or plant (something) firmly in a place; to fix, to root, to settle.
4. Of a thing: to establish or settle itself in a place.

Verb

1. 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.
2. To cause (urine) to be held in a person's bladder.

Synonyms

lift

heave

handle

haft

weight

avoirdupois

ponderosity

raise

heftiness

massiveness

heft up

ponderousness

heave up

hoist

importance

influence

knob

leaven

lug

onus

pick up

pommel

press

proof

pummel

rear

sinker

take up

up

🆙

upheave

uplift

upraise

weigh

weightiness

accent

printing shop

ponderation

overweight

stress

bump up

bob

bulk

burden

clutch

dumbbell

elevate

emphasis

encumbrance

fascicle

get up

grip

heaviness

Pronounced as (IPA)

/hɛft/

Etymology

The noun is derived from Late Middle English heft (“heaviness; something heavy, a weight”), from heven (“to lift, raise; to make an effort to lift or raise, heave”) + -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.