heavy
pronunciation
How to pronounce heavy in British English:
UK [ˈhevi]
How to pronounce heavy in American English:
US [ˈhevi]
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- Noun:
- an actor who plays villainous roles
- a serious (or tragic) role in a play
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- Adjective:
- of comparatively great physical weight or density
- unusually great in degree or quantity or number
- of the military or industry; using (or being) the heaviest and most powerful armaments or weapons or equipment
- having or suggesting a viscous consistency
- wide from side to side
- marked by great psychological weight; weighted down especially with sadness or troubles or weariness
- usually describes a large person who is fat but has a large frame to carry it
- (used of soil) compact and fine-grained
- darkened by clouds
- of great intensity or power or force
- (physics, chemistry) being or containing an isotope with greater than average atomic mass or weight
- (of an actor or role) being or playing the villain
- permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter
- made of fabric having considerable thickness
- of a drinker or drinking; indulging intemperately
- prodigious
- used of syllables or musical beats
- full and loud and deep
- of great gravity or crucial import; requiring serious thought
- slow and laborious because of weight
- large and powerful; especially designed for heavy loads or rough work
- dense or inadequately leavened and hence likely to cause distress in the alimentary canal
- sharply inclined
- full of; bearing great weight
- requiring or showing effort
- characterized by toilsome effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort
- lacking lightness or liveliness
- (of sleep) deep and complete
- in an advanced stage of pregnancy
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- Adverb:
- slowly as if burdened by much weight
Word Origin
- heavy
- heavy: [OE] From the prehistoric Germanic verb *khabjan ‘lift’ was derived the noun *khabiz ‘weight’. This in turn was the source of the adjective *khabiga- ‘weighty’, from which have come Dutch hevig and English heavy (the other Germanic languages once had related forms, but have long since abandoned them in favour of other ways of expressing ‘heaviness’).=> heave
- heavy (adj.)
- Old English hefig "heavy, having much weight; important, grave; oppressive; slow, dull," from Proto-Germanic *hafiga "containing something; having weight" (cognates: Old Saxon, Old High German hebig, Old Norse hofugr, Middle Dutch hevich, Dutch hevig), from PIE *kap- "to grasp" (see capable). Jazz slang sense of "profound, serious" is from 1937 but would have been comprehensible to an Anglo-Saxon. Heavy industry recorded from 1932. Heavy metal attested by 1839 in chemistry; in nautical jargon from at least 1744 in sense "large-caliber guns on a ship." While we undervalue the nicely-balanced weight of broadsides which have lately been brought forward with all the grave precision of Cocker, we are well aware of the decided advantages of heavy metal. ["United Services Journal," London, 1830] As a type of rock music, from 1972.
- heavy (n.)
- mid-13c., "something heavy; heaviness," from heavy (adj.). Theatrical sense of "villain" is 1880.
Example
- 1. A heavy step went down the stairs .
- 2. As the heavy cars pass , the bridge sways .
- 3. Offspring can also be unusually large and heavy .
- 4. Tort costs are especially heavy in health care .
- 5. Across the board , surveys regularly tell how graft is an unusually heavy tax on indian business .