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heck

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heck¹

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

Where it comes from

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

interjection hecc

  1. euphemistic Hell. Heck, what did I expect? It's too muddy out to go biking today.

noun hecc

  1. euphemistic, uncountable Hell. You can go to heck as far as I'm concerned.

    Similar: under hell

heck²

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

Where it comes from

Possibly supported by feck.

verb hecks · hecking · hecked · hecc

  1. informal to break, to destroy

    Similar: fuck, bork

  2. informal to mess up

heck³

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

Where it comes from

See hatch (“a half door”).

noun hecks · hack · hecc

  1. informal The bolt or latch of a door.
  2. informal A rack for cattle to feed at.
  3. informal, obsolete A door, especially one partly of latticework.
  4. informal A latticework contrivance for catching fish.
  5. informal An apparatus for separating the threads of warps into sets, as they are wound upon the reel from the bobbins, in a warping machine.

    Similar: heck-box

  6. informal A bend or winding of a stream.

Heck⁴

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

proper noun

  1. A hardy breed of domestic cattle, the result of an attempt to breed back the extinct aurochs from modern aurochs-derived cattle in the 1920s and 1930s.

Heck⁵

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

Where it comes from

English, Dutch and south German surname, all from words meaning "hedge," "enclosure," "fence," from *haggju. Compare Van Heck, Hatch.

proper noun Hecks

  1. A surname, possibly from German.

Heck⁶

  • /hɛk/

Rhymes with -ɛk

proper noun

  1. A civil parish in North Yorkshire, England, previously in Selby district, with the villages of Great Heck and Little Heck.
  2. A hamlet in Dumfries and Galloway council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NY0980).

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: devil, hell, thing, whorehouse, brothel, strength, story, thin, force, dammit, funny, crud, proof, aw, darn, dang

Translations

Every language

intj euphemism of hell

Españolcaray
Portuguêsdiacho
Italianodiamine

noun euphemism of hell

Italianodiavolo

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Cite this
MLA

"heck." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/heck. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

heck. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/heck

Chicago

"heck." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/heck.

BibTeX
@misc{heck_2026,
  title = {heck},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/heck},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}