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

But with a final heave of the digger bucket, a shower of gold was released from the soil.

From BBC ● Apr. 25, 2026

A last-second heave looked on-line to give Vanderbilt the win—but circled the rim and bounced out.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 22, 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

I heave my book bag onto my shoulder, and we start walking up the block—slowly, because that’s how Ma hobbles along with her cane.

From "Dragons in a Bag" by Zetta Elliott

He guides me inside a warehouse full of vast, bubbling water tanks and heaves out a haul of the squirming, long, thin black fish.

From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2026

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

From National Geographic ● Jan. 23, 2024

Every few minutes, as if on command, it felt like the entire gym quieted in between their heaves just to watch a master at work.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2023

As she listened to her girlfriend on the phone, Sophie began hyperventilating and sobbing in heaves; her hands and toes twitched.

From New York Times ● May 17, 2023

She slides aside the small dining table and heaves open the hatch.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

Mostly, though, the stands heaved with fans from Argentina.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026

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

Every Navy officer I knew heaved a huge sigh of relief.

From Slate ● Dec. 23, 2025

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

The bard, who had been silent this while, heaved a sorrowful sigh.

From "The Black Cauldron" by Lloyd Alexander

“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

Just as Farage was explaining the purpose of his demonstration to the assembled media, another vessel hove alongside—to wit, a white pleasure cruiser by the name of Sarpedon.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 23, 2016

The same day, Monroe’s ship hove into sight of the French coast.

From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2015

At which point the English hove into view.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 3, 2015

The man that hove into view and stood there looking at him was dressed in a gray and yellow ski parka.

From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

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

It's Saturday afternoon and the tournament resembles a beach bash in full swing, costumed bodies heaving under the blazing sun.

From BBC ● Feb. 20, 2026

And it wasn’t lost on Rove that the spindly, excitable man narrating that story for them in a thick Hungarian accent “was once a 16-year-old picking up paving blocks and heaving them at Soviet tanks.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 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

His words came quickly, tumbling faster and faster, mixed increasingly with crying and great heaving sobs.

From "The Fighting Ground" by Avi

Related Words

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