A Dictionary of Cont..

used in a derived sense, as in he had (I heap of
trouble, but this is not now standard. One or
two hundred years ago heap was replaced by
deal as the word meaning a large amount. And
in current English deal is being replaced by lot.
hear. The past tense is heard. The participle is
also heard. When hear is used in an active form
it may be followed by an object and the simple
form of a verb, as in I heard him speak, or by
an object and the -ing form of a verb, as in I
heard him speaking. When hear is used in a
passive form it may be followed by a toinfinitive,
as in he was heard to speak, or by the
-ing form of a verb, as in he was henrd speaking.
When hear is used in the sense of “hear of” it
may be followed by a clause, as in Z heard that
he spoke.
Hear may be followed by an object and a
past participle with passive meaning (that is, the
be of a passive infinitive may be suppressed),
as in Z have heard it told that he is a miser. The
it may be omitted from a sentence of this kind,
as in Z have heard said that he is a miser. The
present tense form say, as in I’ve heard say he
is a miser, is not the same construction but is
an accepted idiom. It has probably been formed
from the noun hearsay. Both expressions are
standard English. Hear tell seems to be an effort
to introduce variety into this idiom. It is accepted
spoken English in the United States but
does not now appear in writing. See also listen.
heart. The heart is a tough organ but as a term
for the seat of the emotions it has been pretty
well worn out. As an expression for utter devotion,
complete earnestness, absolute sincerity,
heart and soul is now a cliche. No one with any
feeling for freshness in language will refer any
more to hearts of gold, or of stone, or of oak.
Even if he had to refer literally to something
that had an actual heart or center of gold or
stone, he would probably use some circumlocution
to avoid the hackneyed phrase. For the
same reason one no longer speaks or writes of
having a heart in the right place or in one’s
mouth, or of having one’s heart bleed for someone.
The discriminating will avoid getting to the
heart of the matter.
heathen. When speaking of men individually,
heathen is a singular and has a regular plural
in s, as in one heathen and three heathens. The
singular form may also be used as a group
name, meaning all of them, in which case it
regularly takes a plural verb, as in the heathen
are hard to persuade. But this is not a true
plural and we do not speak of three heathen.
See also agnostic.
heave. The past tense is heaved or hove. The participle
is also heaved or hove. Heaved is the
preferred form in general English, for the past
tense and for the participle, and hove is pretty
much confined to nautical matters. We say the
ship hove in sight and they hove up the anchor,
but other things are usually heaved.
heave a sigh of relief. Sighs have been heaved
out of pensive bosoms so long and so often that
the discriminating writer, if he must get a sigh
217 Hebrew
out of someone will find some other name for
the portion of the anatomy from which it comes
and some other word for its ejection than
heaved.
heaven; heavens. These words can be used interchangeably.
Some grammarians claim that the
plural form heavens always means the sky and
the singular form heaven, the home of the blest.
But this distinction is not observed strictly.
Good heavens! does not refer to the atmosphere,
and the New Jerusalem is not intended in sees
in heaven the light of London flaring like a
dreary dawn. Heaven (and sometimes heavens)
is also used euphemistically as a term for God
in various emphatic statements and exclamations
(Heaven only knows. For heaven’s sakes).
In this use it is sometimes capitalized, but,
usually, those who feel that it ought to be capitalized
in this sense recognize it as a piece of
profanity and prefer not to use it at all.
heavenly. See paradise.
heavy. See weighty.
Hebrew; Israelite; Israeli; Jew; Semite. A Hebrew
is a member of that branch of the Semitic race
descended from Abraham, an Israelite, a Jew.
Hebrew is a Semitic language, the language of
the ancient Hebrews, which although not vernacular
after 100 B.C., was retained as the
scholarly and liturgical language of Jews and is
now used as the language of Israelis. When the
word is used of a person in the United States
today it is usually employed as a euphemism to
avoid Jew and while the euphemism is, no
doubt, well intended, it carries to the sensitive
ear the implication that the speaker regards the
word he is seeking to avoid as indecent, shameful,
embarrassing or dangerous.
An Israelite is a descendant of Jacob or Israel.
In current American usage the word is confined
to Biblical references. An Zsrueli is a native or
inhabitant of the state of Israel.
To define the connotations of the word Jew
would require many harrowing volumes. It is
the everyday, working word. It is a word of incomparable
dignity and immeasurable scorn and
everything in between. It used to be a word of
great comic range but that, at least, is fading.
Its colloquial uses as an adjective or a verb are
all offensive. The guidance to the “correct” use
of the noun does not lie in any dictionary but
in the heart and mind of the user.
Semite is properly a linguistic term and means
a member of a speech family which comprises
the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, and others. The
noun with its adjective is rarely employed today
except by linguists and anthropologists. The
compound anti-Semitism is, however, widely
used as a term for hostility to Jews. The term is
no longer accepted openly, as it was in France
in the nineteenth century, by those who practice
it, but is used almost exclusively by those who
disapprove of it. It is a somewhat scholarly word
and usually describes those attitudes and degrees
of hostility that stop short of the violence to
which they incite others. The English term lewbaiting
(a closer translation of the German