noun

• (uncountable)
  "A high quality hammer should have good balance and heft."
• (uncountable)
  "The man had been carried out of the yard while the fire was still burning; […] Public opinion was much divided, some holding that it would go hard with a man of his age and heft; but the common belief seemed to be that he was of that sort "as'd take a deal o'killin'," and that he would be none the worse for such a fall as that."
• (uncountable)
  "He's got a good voice, and reads well; but come to a sermon—wal, ain't no gret heft in't."
• (uncountable)
  "Put more baldly, the reason why Republicans and British Conservatives started giving each other copies of Atlas Shrugged in the 80s was that [Ayn] Rand seemed to grant intellectual heft to the prevailing ethos of the time."

verb

• (transitive)
  "He hefted the sack of concrete into the truck."
• (transitive)
  "[H]e took up a root or two [potatoes] here and there, and "hefted it," (that is to say, poised it carefully to judge the weight, as one does a letter for the post) and then stroked the sleek skin lovingly, and put it down gingerly for fear of any bruise."
• (transitive)
  "Sim's ben to college, and he's putty smart and chipper. Come to heft him, tho', he don't weigh much 'longside o' Parson Cushing."
• (intransitive) To have (substantial) weight; to weigh.
  ""[I]t's yellow! is it gold?" / "My!" exclaimed his mother, weighing it in her hand, "I do believe it is. Brass never would heft so much, and would be green. Bless me, Wat, this is a find! Where ever did you come by it? In the gutters, do you say?""

verb

• (obsolete) simple past and past participle of heave

verb

• (transitive)
  "For I had been "hefting" (as the business is called in our Galloway land) a double score of lambs which had just been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty upland pastures. Now it is the nature of sheep to return if they can to their mother-hill, or, at least, to stray farther and farther off, seeking some well-known landmark. So, till such new-comers grow satisfied and "heft" (or attach) themselves to the soil, they must be watched carefully both night and day."
• (transitive)
  "[I]t may be as well that Alan and you do not meet till he is hefted as it were to his new calling."
• (transitive)
  "[…] I hae heard him say, that the root of the matter was mair deeply hafted in that wild muirland parish than in the Canogate of Edinburgh."
• (intransitive, reflexive) Of a thing: to establish or settle itself in a place.