heck

• IPA^(key): /hɛk/

  • Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -ɛk

Late 19th century, originally dialectal northern English, from a euphemistic alteration of hell.[1][2]

heck

1. (euphemistic) Hell.

   What the heck are you doing?

heck (uncountable)

1. (euphemistic) Hell.

   You can go to heck as far as I'm concerned.

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.

• See under hell.

• oh my heck

See hatch (“a half door”).

• hack

heck (plural hecks)

1. The bolt or latch of a door.
2. A rack for cattle to feed at.
3. (obsolete) A door, especially one partly of latticework.
4. A latticework contrivance for catching fish.
5. (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.
6. A bend or winding of a stream.

• at heck and manger

• heck in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• heck in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• heck at OneLook Dictionary Search

• chek

• Audio

  (file)

heck

1. singular imperative of hecken
2. (colloquial) first-person singular present of hecken

heck

1. Alternative form of hacche