Wiktionary

heel

See also: Heel, hééł, and ȟeel

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English hele, from Old English hēla, from Proto-West Germanic *hą̄hilō, from Proto-Germanic *hanhilaz, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *hanhaz (“heel, hock”), equivalent to hock +‎ -le. More at hock.

Compare North Frisian haiel, West Frisian hyl, Dutch hiel, German Low German Hiel, Danish and Norwegian hæl, Swedish häl.

Noun

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heel (plural heels)

 
A girl's heel
 
heel of the hand
 
Heel of a loaf of rye bread
  1. (anatomy) The rear part of the foot, where it joins the leg.
    • 1709, John Denham, Coopers-Hill:
      He [the stag] calls to mind his strength and then his speed, / His winged heels and then his armed head.
  2. The part of a shoe's sole which supports the foot's heel.
  3. The rear part of a sock or similar covering for the foot.
  4. The part of the palm of a hand closest to the wrist.
    He drove the heel of his hand into the man's nose.
  5. (usually in the plural) A woman's high-heeled shoe.
    • 2008, Kwame Shauku, Wonderful Williams and the Magnificent Seven, page 257:
      She'd been wearing heels, and fell backward off her right heel and twisted or broke her ankle.
    • 2011, Candace Irvine, A Dangerous Engagement:
      Opting to improve her odds of making it up the stairs and into the privacy of her room, she kicked off her left heel, and then her right before leaning down to scoop them up.
    • 2015, Alex Blackmore, Killing Eva:
      Flat shoes. As she pushed off her left heel and pressed the sole of her foot to the cold floor she looked forward to them.
  6. (firearms) The back, upper part of the stock.
  7. (music) The thickening of the neck of a stringed instrument where it attaches to the body.
  8. The last or lowest part of anything.
    the heel of a mast
    the heel of a vessel
    • 1860, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage:
      And then again the sportsmen would move at an undertaker's pace, when the fox had traversed and the hounds would be at a loss to know which was the hunt and which was the heel
  9. (US, Ireland, Scotland, Australia) A crust end-piece of a loaf of bread.
  10. (US) The base of a bun sliced in half lengthwise.
    Synonyms: boot, butt
    • 1996, Ester Reiter, Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan Into the Fryer, page 100:
      The bottom half, or the bun heel is placed in the carton, and the pickle slices spread evenly over the meat or cheese.
  11. (informal, synecdochically) A contemptible, unscrupulous, inconsiderate or thoughtless person.
    • 1953, Raymond Chandler, chapter 29, in The Long Goodbye:
      I grinned at him sneeringly. I was the heel to end all heels. Wait until the man is down, then kick him and kick him again. He's weak. He can't resist or kick back.
    • 2011, Philip Reeve, Scrivener's Moon, Scholastic, →ISBN, pages 361–362:
      She should be glad to have him on her side. So why did Godshawk's memories, grumbling again in that substrate of her brain, keep reminding her of heels he'd known, and tricksters?
    • 2022 March 20, Jason Bailey, “‘Basic Instinct’ at 30: A Time Capsule That Can Still Offend”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN:
      Douglas steams and stammers, a typical film noir heel, while Stone delivers her dialogue with the devilish gleam of a sly actor having a great time.
  12. (by extension, slang, professional wrestling) A headlining wrestler regarded as a "bad guy," whose ring persona embodies villainous or reprehensible traits and demonstrates characteristics of a braggart and a bully.
    • 1992, Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, page 158:
      Freedman began his analysis by noting two important facts about professional wrestling: First, that heels triumph considerably more often than do babyfaces […]
  13. (card games) The cards set aside for later use in a patience or solitaire game.
  14. Anything resembling a human heel in shape; a protuberance; a knob.
  15. (architecture) The lower end of a timber in a frame, as a post or rafter.
  16. (specifically, US) The obtuse angle of the lower end of a rafter set sloping.
  17. (architecture, obsolete) A cyma reversa.
    • 1722, Claude Perrault, A Treatise of the Five Orders in Architecture, page vii:
      Of these there are two Kinds; in the one, that Part which has the greatest Projecture is Concave, and is term'd Doucine, or an Upright Ogee; in the other, the Convex Part has the greatest Projecture; and this is call'd the Heel, or Inverted Ogee.
    • 1846, George William Francis, The Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures:
      There are two kinds—the upright ogee, in which the concave part projects most, and the heel or inverted ogee, which has the convexity most prominent. This last, with its fillet above, is always the upper moulding of a classical cornice.
    • 1891, Vignola, Practical Elementary Treatise on Architecture, page ii:
      Talon: Heel moulding or ogee
  18. (carpentry) The short side of an angled cut.
  19. (golf) The part of a club head's face nearest the shaft.
  20. The lower end of the bit (cutting edge) of an axehead; as opposed to the toe (upper end).
  21. In a carding machine, the part of a flat nearest the cylinder.
  22. (nautical) The junction between the keel and the stempost of a vessel; an angular wooden join connecting the two.
Synonyms
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Antonyms
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  • (antonym(s) of “headlining wrestler”): babyface
  • (antonym(s) of “angled cut in carpentry”): toe
Derived terms
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Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

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heel (third-person singular simple present heels, present participle heeling, simple past and past participle heeled)

  2. To follow at somebody's heels; to chase closely.
    She called to her dog to heel.
  3. To add a heel to, or increase the size of the heel of (a shoe or boot).
  4. To kick with the heel.
    she heeled her horse forward
  5. (transitive) To perform by the use of the heels, as in dancing, running, etc.
  6. (transitive) To arm with a gaff, as a cock for fighting.
  7. (golf, transitive) To hit (the ball) with the heel of the club.
  8. (American football, transitive) To make (a fair catch) standing with one foot forward, the heel on the ground and the toe up.
  9. (US, intransitive) At Yale University, to work as a heeler or student journalist.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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Probably inferred from hielded, the past tense of hield, from Middle English helden, heelden, from Old English hyldan, hieldan (“to incline”), cognate with Old Norse hella (“to pour out”) (whence Danish hælde (“lean, pour”)).

Verb

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heel (third-person singular simple present heels, present participle heeling, simple past and past participle heeled)

  1. (chiefly nautical) To incline to one side; to tilt. [from 16th c.]
    • 1764, John Nourse, Navigation Or, the Art of Sailing Upon the Sea, page 65:
      The faster a ship sails, the better she will answer her helm; if she sail very slow, she will scarce steer at all. If she heel much, she won't answer the helm so well.
Translations
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See also
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Noun

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heel (plural heels)

  1. (nautical) The act of inclining or canting from a vertical position; a cant. [from 17th c.]
    • 1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 14:
      [T]he boat, from a sudden gust of wind, taking a deep heel, I tumbled overboard and down I went […] .
Synonyms
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Etymology 3

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See hele (“conceal, keep secret, cover”).

Verb

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heel (third-person singular simple present heels, present participle heeling, simple past and past participle heeled)

  1. (rare, now especially in the phrase "heel in") Alternative form of hele (“cover; conceal”).
    • 1911, Biennial Report of the State Geologist, North Carolina Geological Survey Section, page 92:
      They should be dug up with a sharp mattock or grub hoe, the roots being broken as little as possible, and they should be heeled in a cool place and protected from the sun until ready to plant. When lifted for planting from the trench in which heeled the roots should be kept covered with a wet sack.
    • 1913, Indian School Journal, page 142:
      In the late fall the seedlings may be dug and heeled in very closely until all the leaves have dropped.
    • 1916, Transactions of the Indiana Horticultural Society, page 111:
      Member: Did you water the trees when you set them out?
      Walter Vonnegut: No; I heeled the trees in as soon as they were received.
    • 1937, Robert Wilson, Ernest John George, Planting and care of shelterbelts on the northern Great Plains, page 15:
      If trees are received from the nursery in the fall, they should be carefully heeled in until the planting season opens in the spring.
    • 1976, Keith W. Dorman, The Genetics and Breeding of Southern Pines, page 66:
      Place seedlings in the trench. Small-stemmed seedlings may be heeled-in in bunches of 25, but large seedlings should be heeled-in loose.
    • (Can we date this quote?), Brian Kerr, Lodge St Lawrence 144 Ritual, page 34:
      [I] of my own free will and accord, do hereby, here at and hereon, solemnly swear that I will always heel, conceal and never improperly reveal any of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to [the Masons].

References

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Anagrams

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Afar

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Heel.

Etymology

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(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈheːl/ [ˈheːl]
  • Hyphenation: heel

Noun

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héel m 

  1. cardamom

Declension

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Declension of héel
absolutive héel
predicative héeli
subjective héel
genitive héel
Postpositioned forms
l-case héelil
k-case héelik
t-case héelit
h-case héelih

References

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  • E. M. Parker, R. J. Hayward (1985) “heel”, in An Afar-English-French dictionary (with Grammatical Notes in English), University of London, →ISBN
  • Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)‎[2], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis), page 84

Dutch

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle Dutch hêel, from Old Dutch hēl, from Proto-West Germanic *hail, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz.

Adjective

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heel (comparative heler, superlative heelst)

  1. complete, full, whole
    Synonyms: gans, volledig
    Ga je die hele taart alleen opeten?
    Are you going to eat that entire cake by yourself?
  2. intact, unbroken, undamaged, untarnished
    Ik heb het bord laten vallen, maar hij is nog heel.
    I dropped the plate, but it's still intact.
  3. big, enormous, significant
Usage notes
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When the noun is accompanied by a definite article, a possessive pronoun, a demonstrative pronoun, or a genitive construction, heel in the sense of "whole" may precede the whole phrase, in uninflected form. For example, the following are both correct:

de hele dag / heel de dag ― the entire day
Declension
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Declension of heel
uninflected heel
inflected hele
comparative heler
positive comparative superlative
predicative/adverbial heel heler het heelst
het heelste
indefinite m./f. sing. hele helere heelste
n. sing. heel heler heelste
plural hele helere heelste
definite hele helere heelste
partitive heels helers —
Derived terms
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Descendants
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  • Berbice Creole Dutch: hele
  • Negerhollands: heel, hele, helle
  • Skepi Creole Dutch: helwel, he
  • → Saramaccan: híi
  • → Sranan Tongo: eri, heri, hele, heele, herheri

Adverb

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heel

  1. very
Usage notes
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Although it is an adverb, heel may be inflected to hele so as to match a following adjective. For example, both of these sentences are correct:

  • Dat is een heel grote boom.
  • Dat is een hele grote boom.
    That is a very large tree.

The second sentence with hele may, however, be regarded as informal and less appropriate for formal writing.

Only heel is obviously possible when the adjective is not inflected to begin with:

  • Dat is een heel groot huis.
    That is a very large house.
Descendants
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Etymology 2

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See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb

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heel

  1. inflection of helen:
    1. first-person singular present indicative
    2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
    3. imperative

Anagrams

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Luxembourgish

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Verb

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heel

  1. second-person singular imperative of heelen

Middle Dutch

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Etymology

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From Old Dutch hēl, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz.

Adjective

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hêel

  1. whole, full
  2. undamaged, unbroken
  3. healthy, healed
  4. honest, sincere, pure

Inflection

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Adjective
Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
Nominative Indefinite hêel hêle hêel hêle
Definite hêle hêle
Accusative Indefinite hêlen hêle hêel hêle
Definite hêle
Genitive Indefinite hêels hêelre hêels hêelre
Definite hêels, hêlen hêels, hêlen
Dative hêlen hêelre hêlen hêlen

Descendants

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Further reading

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Middle English

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Noun

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heel

  1. Alternative form of hele (“health”)

Yola

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Etymology

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From Middle English hele, from Old English hēla, from Proto-West Germanic *hą̄hilō.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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heel

  1. heel
    • 1927, “YOLA ZONG O BARONY VORTH”, in THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD, page 132, line 7:
      Wi spur upa heel hay gaed him a goad,
      With a spur on his heel, he gave him a goad,

References

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  • Kathleen A. Browne (1927) The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Sixth Series, Vol.17 No.2, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, page 132
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