Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

heft

/hɛft/ noun, verb

Also a form of heave

Forms hefts hefting hefted haft

  1. noun The feel of the weight of something; heaviness. “A high quality hammer should have good balance and heft.”
  2. noun (dated except UK, dialectal and US) The force exerted by an object due to gravitation; weight.
  3. noun (figurative) Graveness, seriousness; gravity.
  4. noun (figurative) Importance, influence; weight.
  5. noun (US, informal, dated) The greater part of something; the bulk, the mass.
  6. noun (UK, dialectal) An act of lifting; a lift.
  7. noun (obsolete) An act of heaving (lifting with difficulty); an instance of violent exertion or straining.
  8. verb To lift or lift up (something, especially a heavy object). “He hefted the sack of concrete into the truck.”
  9. verb To test the weight of (something) by lifting.
  10. verb (figurative) To evaluate or test (someone or something).
  11. verb (intransitive) To have (substantial) weight; to weigh.
  12. noun A piece of pastureland which farm animals (chiefly cattle or sheep) have become accustomed to.
  13. noun A flock or group of farm animals (chiefly cattle or sheep) which have become accustomed to a particular piece of pastureland.
  14. verb (agriculture) To accustom (a flock or group of farm animals, chiefly cattle or sheep) to a piece of pastureland.
  15. verb To establish or settle (someone) in an occupation or place of residence.
  16. verb To establish or plant (something) firmly in a place; to fix, to root, to settle.
  17. verb (intransitive, reflexive) Of a thing: to establish or settle itself in a place.
  18. verb (agriculture) 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.
  19. verb (by extension) To cause (urine) to be held in a person's bladder.
  20. noun A number of sheets of paper fastened together, as to form a book or a notebook.

Synonyms

heftiness hoist massiveness ponderousness ponderosity heave heave up heft up

Etymology

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.

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”).

Borrowed from Scots heft, from Old Norse hepta (“to bind; to hinder, impede; to hold back, restrain”), from Proto-Germanic *haftijaną (“to bind; to secure”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to hold, seize”).

Borrowed from German Heft (“issue of a serial publication, number; magazine; notebook; notepad”), a back-formation from heften (“to fasten”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haftijaną (“to bind; to secure”): see further at etymology 4.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun Same as Haft, n. [Obs.] Waller.
  2. noun The act or effort of heaving [Obs.]
  3. noun Weight; ponderousness. [Colloq.]
  4. verb To heave up; to raise aloft.

Etymology [From Heave: cf. hefe weight. Cf. Haft.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “heft”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details