heart
Meanings
- A muscular organ that pumps blood through the body, traditionally thought to be the seat of emotion.
- One's feelings and emotions, especially considered as part of one's character.
- The seat of the affections or sensibilities, collectively or separately, as love, hate, joy, grief, courage, etc.; rarely, the seat of the understanding or will; usually in a good sense; personality.
- Emotional strength that allows one to continue in difficult situations; courage; spirit; a will to compete.
- Vigorous and efficient activity; power of fertile production; condition of the soil, whether good or bad.
- A term of affectionate or kindly and familiar address.
- Memory.
- A wight or being.
- A conventional shape or symbol used to represent the heart, love, or emotion: ♥.
- A playing card of the suit hearts featuring one or more heart-shaped symbols.
- The twenty-fourth Lenormand card.
- The centre, essence, or core.
- To be fond of. Often bracketed or abbreviated with a heart symbol.
- To mark a comment, post, reply, etc., with the heart symbol (❤).
- To give heart to; to hearten; to encourage.
- To fill an interior with rubble, as a wall or a breakwater.
- To form a dense cluster of leaves, a heart, especially of lettuce or cabbage.
- A surname.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
PIE word *ḱḗr Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hertô Proto-West Germanic *hertā Old English heorte Middle English herte English heart From Middle English herte, from Old English heorte (“heart”), from Proto-West Germanic *hertā, from Proto-Germanic *hertô (“heart”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱérd (“heart”). Doublet of cardia; see also core. Cognate with Dutch hart, German Herz, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål hjerte, Norwegian Nynorsk hjarte, Swedish hjärta, Faroese and Icelandic hjarta. Most of the modern figurative senses (such as passion or compassion, spirit, inmost feelings, especially love, affection, and courage) were present in Old English. However, the meaning “center” dates from the early 14th century. The verb sense “to love” is from the 1977 I ❤ NY advertising campaign. Notes on spelling The spelling ⟨ear⟩ for /ɑː(ɹ)/ is paralleled by hearken and hearth, but is problematic since an Early Modern variant with /ɛːr/ can be posited for those words, but not heart. Perhaps it represents Middle Scots hart /hɛːrt/ (reflecting the Scots lengthening of /a/ before /r/ then a consonant, then the early actuation of the Great Vowel Shift in Scots) or a parallel development in Northern England. Alternatively, a back-spelling by speakers of dialects where preconsonantal /ɛːr/ was shortened early, allowing it to undergo the late Middle English lowering to /ar/ (reflected in forms such as larn "learn") is possible.