heft
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L16906 on Wikidata ↗verb
- to hoist of heave
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /hɛft/ / /heft/
noun
Etymology: 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.
- A number of sheets of paper fastened together, as to form a book or a notebook.
- 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.”
verb
Etymology: 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”).
- 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. […] [E]very farmer is surely aware, or ought to be aware, that the person who purchases a hefted cow on account of the magnitude of its udder exhibited in the market, gains nothing by the device; because, when the cow comes into his possession, she will never be hefted, and, of course, never shew the greatest magnitude of udder, and never, of course, confer the benefit for which she was bought in preference to others with udders in a more natural state. If, then, purchasers derive no benefit from hefting, because they do not allow hefting, why do they encourage so cruel and afterwards injurious practice in dealers?”
“The heavy udders of hefted cows trailed on the ground, dripping milk on the greensward. Stray cattle ate the rich grass.”
- To cause (urine) to be held in a person's bladder.