[edit]English Wikipedia has an article on:heckWikipedia
Alternative forms
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hecc
Pronunciation
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IPA(key): /hɛk/
Audio (Southern England):
(file)
Rhymes: -ɛk
Etymology 1
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Late 19th century, originally dialectal northern English, from a euphemistic alteration of hell.[1][2]
Interjection
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heck
(euphemistic) Hell. Heck, what did I expect? It's too muddy out to go biking today.
Translations
[edit] euphemism of hell
Bulgarian: по дяволите!(po djavolite!)
Czech: safra (cs)
Finnish: hitto (fi), hemmetti, helkkari (fi)
Italian: diamine
Māori: ata (mi), taukahore
Norwegian: helsike
Portuguese: diacho (pt)
Spanish: caray (es)
Swedish: Hälsingland (sv)
Noun
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heck (uncountable)
(euphemistic) Hell. You can go to heck as far as I'm concerned.
2024 March 20, Richard Foster, “Vital experience in an open-air classroom”, in RAIL, number 1005, page 57:"And the railway industry needs a heck of a lot of people to be up-skilled," notes Darroch.
Usage notes
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Heck usually only replaces hell in idiomatic expressions or as a generic intensifier or vulgarity. It is only rarely, and for intentionally jocular effect, used as a euphemism for the actual concept of hell.
Synonyms
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See under hell.
Derived terms
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as heck
bleeding heck
bloody heck
blooming heck
for the heck of it
go to heck
hecka
heck board
heck-care
heckfire
heckhound
heck if I know
heckin'
heckin
hecking
heck knows
heck no
heck of a
heckuva
heck yeah
heck yes
how the heck
like heck
oh my heck
scare the heck out of
snowball's chance in heck
the heck
to heck in a handbasket
what the heck
when heck freezes over
when the heck
where the heck
who the heck
why the heck
Translations
[edit] euphemism of hell
Danish: søren
Finnish: hitto (fi)
Italian: diavolo (it)m
Swedish: helsike (sv)
Etymology 2
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Blend of to heck(“destroyed, messed up”) + fuck, possibly supported by feck.
Verb
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heck (third-person singular simple present hecks, present participle hecking, simple past and past participle hecked)(informal)
to break, to destroy Synonyms:fuck, bork
to mess up
Derived terms
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heck up
Etymology 3
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See hatch(“a half door”).
Alternative forms
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hack
Noun
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heck (plural hecks)
The bolt or latch of a door.
A rack for cattle to feed at.
(obsolete) A door, especially one partly of latticework.
A latticework contrivance for catching fish.
(weaving) An apparatus for separating the threads of warps into sets, as they are wound upon the reel from the bobbins, in a warping machine. Synonym:heck-box
A bend or winding of a stream.
Derived terms
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at heck and manger
References
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^ James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Heck”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.
^ Wright, Joseph (1902), The English Dialect Dictionary[1], volume 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 125
Further reading
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“heck”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “heck”, in The Century Dictionary[…], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
“heck”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams
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chek
German
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Pronunciation
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Audio (Germany (Berlin)):
(file)
Verb
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heck
singular imperative of hecken
(colloquial)first-person singular present of hecken
