heave

American  

[heev] / hiv /

verb (used with object)

heaves, present (3rd person singular) heaved, past participle, past hove, past participle, past heaving present participle

1. to throw, especially to lift and throw with effort, force, or violence.

   The sailors began heaving the cargo overboard.

   I saw someone heave a brick through the window.

   Synonyms:

   sling, cast, fling, pitch, hurl

2. to raise or lift with effort or force; hoist.

   He tried to heave the sledgehammer, but he wasn’t strong enough.

   Synonyms:

   elevate

3. to utter laboriously or painfully.

   He heaved a sigh.

4. to cause to rise and fall with or as if with a swelling motion.

   She stood there weeping, sobs heaving her chest as she covered her face.

5. to vomit; throw up.

   He heaved his breakfast before noon.

6. Nautical.

   1. to move into a certain position or situation.

      to heave a vessel aback.

   2. to move in a certain direction.

      Heave the capstan around! Heave up the anchor!

7. to haul or pull on (a rope, cable, line, etc.) with the hands, a winch, a capstan, or the like.

   Heave the anchor cable!

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verb (used without object)

heaves, present (3rd person singular) heaved, past participle, past hove, past participle, past heaving present participle

1. to rise and fall in rhythmically alternate movements.

   The ship heaved and rolled in the swelling sea.

2. to breathe with effort; pant.

   He sat there heaving and puffing from the exertion.

3. to vomit or retch.

   The smell of the nearby meat processing plant made me heave.

4. (of the ground, pavement, etc.) to rise as if thrust up; swell or bulge.

   The ground heaved and small fissures appeared for miles around.

   Repeated freezing and thawing will cause the pavement to heave.

   Synonyms:

   billow, surge

5. to pull or haul on a rope, cable, etc..

   We heaved on the rope with all our might, but the log did not budge.

6. to push, as on a capstan bar.

7. Nautical.

   1. to move in a certain direction or into a certain position or situation.

      heave about;

      heave alongside;

      heave in stays.

   2. (of a vessel) to rise and fall on high waves, especially waves passing at right angles to the ship.

noun

heaves plural

1. an act or effort of lifting, pulling, or pushing.

   With one mighty heave they managed to haul the unconscious man into the boat.

2. a throw, toss, or cast.

   With a great heave, she threw the stone out of the garden bed.

3. Informal. the act of rejecting or expelling, or the attempt to do so.

   The politician narrowly survived a heave by his own party.

4. an effortful act of vomiting, retching, coughing, or sighing.

   With a heave he coughed up the river water in his lungs.

   She turned away and bent over as a heave overcame her.

5. Geology. the horizontal component of the apparent displacement resulting from a fault, measured in a vertical plane perpendicular to the strike.

6. the rise and fall of the waves or swell of a sea.

   The ship’s motion is so stable, one doesn’t feel the heave of the ocean.

7. Also called broken wind.  (used with a singular verb) heaves, a disease of horses, similar to asthma in human beings, characterized by difficult breathing.

verb phrase

1. heave to

   1. Nautical. to stop the headway of (a vessel), especially by bringing the head to the wind and trimming the sails so that they act against one another.

   2. to come to a halt.

2. heave down to careen (a vessel).

3. heave out

   1. to shake loose (a reef taken in a sail).

   2. to loosen (a sail) from its gaskets in order to set it.

idioms

1. heave ho, (an exclamation used by sailors, such as when heaving the anchor up.)

2. heave the lead. lead.

3. heave in sight, to rise to view, such as from below the horizon.

   The ship hove in sight as dawn began to break.

heave British  

/ hiːv /

verb

1. (tr) to lift or move with a great effort

2. (tr) to throw (something heavy) with effort

3. to utter (sounds, sighs, etc) or breathe noisily or unhappily

   to heave a sigh

4. to rise and fall or cause to rise and fall heavily

5. (past tense and past participle hove) nautical

   1. to move or cause to move in a specified way, direction, or position

      to heave in sight

   2. (intr) (of a vessel) to pitch or roll

6. (tr) to displace (rock strata, mineral veins, etc) in a horizontal direction

7. (intr) to retch

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noun

1. the act or an instance of heaving

2. a fling

3. the horizontal displacement of rock strata at a fault

Synonym Usage

See raise.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• heaver
  noun
• heaveless
  adjective
• unheaved
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• heaves
  plural

Participles

• heaving
  present
• heaved
  past
• hove
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• heave
  simple
• heaves
  simple
• have heaved
  perfect
• have hove
  perfect
• has heaved
  perfect
• has hove
  perfect
• am heaving
  progressive
• are heaving
  progressive
• is heaving
  progressive
• have been heaving
  perfect progressive
• has been heaving
  perfect progressive

Past

• heaved
  simple
• hove
  simple
• had heaved
  perfect
• had hove
  perfect
• was heaving
  progressive
• were heaving
  progressive
• had been heaving
  perfect progressive

Future

• will heave
  simple
• will have heaved
  perfect
• will have hove
  perfect
• will be heaving
  progressive
• will have been heaving
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of heave

First recorded before 900; Middle English heven, variant (with -v- from simple past tense and past participle) of hebben, Old English hebban; cognate with German heben, Old Norse hefja, Gothic hafjan; akin to Latin capere “to take”

Explanation

When you heave something, you haul or lift a heavy object. You might not realize how fat your cat has become until you have to heave him out of the way to make room for yourself on the sofa. You heave a heavy object when you lift it, like when you heave piles of wet snow out of your driveway with a shovel, and you can heave yourself out of bed in the morning, if it takes a huge effort to get yourself into a vertical position. You can even heave a heavy sigh, which simply means you sigh loudly. To vomit is also sometimes described as heaving, describing the unpleasant effort of your stomach muscles.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

heave heaves heaved hove heaving

At one point, Nelson appears to snatch the other driver’s sunglasses from his forehead and heave them across the parking lot.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026

In the part of the forest they control, he and other Romee youngsters heave logs to be burned and turned into charcoal, then sent by canoe to the provincial capital Kisangani.

From Barron's ● Feb. 26, 2026

Eight of Scotland's 10 wickets fell as batters attempted to sweep, pull or heave the ball into the leg side.

From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2026

Olha Kosova’s husband is in the military, and the power cuts made it hard to heave the heavy stroller up to the fourth floor and heat water to bathe her 1-year-old daughter.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 26, 2026

Then they would pause, rest, and heave again.

From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien

Malak heaves and leaks tears, stuffs a tattered tissue into the corners of her eyes.

From BBC ● May 7, 2025

The magazines are sometimes oversized and increasingly matte finished, filled with edge-to-edge photographs and literary heaves.

From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2024

With each of their heaves, the rope squeaked and the branch above bounced precariously.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 23, 2024

The worker sprays the medicine in the man’s nose and slaps his chest until he heaves a breath.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2023

She heaves the box all the way to her bedroom and I hear the door slam.

From "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Von Allmen, however, was a picture of celebration after his storming run, the large number of baying Swiss fans in the packed tribune wildly applauding their hero, flags waved, cowbells heaved and air horns blown.

From Barron's ● Feb. 11, 2026

As she fought to keep possession of the ball, she found Dunn wide open in the corner and heaved it to her.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2025

Madison especially thought pure direct democracy would prove unstable, a too-slight skiff heaved about in history’s seas.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025

As battered suitcases and black sacks stuffed full of cigarettes are heaved up through the makeshift trap door, a man who we're told helps out in the shop watches on laughing.

From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2025

When she thought about it that way, that talking to Clara was about justice and fairness, the bucket she heaved up the narrow staircase to the dusty, disused attic didn’t seem quite so heavy.

From "Ophie's Ghosts" by Justina Ireland

Racism has been a feature of American history since the first slave ship hove to off Jamestown in 1619.

From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2025

My husband’s worried face hove into view, coming nearer and nearer.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 6, 2018

“The jury is still out,” said Luc Van den hove, chief executive of the Belgium-based chip research center Imec.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2016

The dark mouths of mines now hove into view, in all sizes and states of dilapidation.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 13, 2015

So their talk ran on, while down the coast, and round toward Ithaka, hove the good ship that had gone out to Pylos bearing Telemakhos and his companions.

From "The Odyssey" by Homer

International rescue teams and frantic families are in a race against time, heaving debris aside in a desperate bid to find the last survivors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026

Here, at a heaving Murrayfield stuffed with the expectant French, they found their complete self.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

De Angelis and Waltz are also a hoot together, she as a heaving, hissing vampire bride who can’t stop licking her chops, he as a bone-dry vampire hunter dedicated to his investigation.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2026

Or what it feels like to ride the slow heaving of the ocean, pulsing like the heartbeat of the world.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2025

He sprang up with his fangs bared and his skeletal chest heaving.

From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer

Related Words

• breathe
• exhale
• groan
• huff
• puff
• spew
• vomit