Heech

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Definitions

1. Dialect term from Scotland meaning to lift or haul something upward into a higher position
2. A Scots verb for hoisting or raising an object up to a higher place
3. Used in Scottish speech to describe pulling or lifting something high off the ground

Etymology: In Scots and northern English, "heech" is the older-looking cousin of "high." English dropped the guttural sound in "high" (the one in Scottish "loch") and kept only the vowel, while the Scots spelling preserves the sound. The adjective means high or lofty, as in a heech hill or a heech tree, and the same root gives the spelling "heich" in some Scots texts. As a verb, it means to raise or hoist something upward, often to lift a load or hang something aloft. The verb follows the same pattern: it is a dialect descendant of the old English verb for raising up, now largely replaced in standard English by "heighten" and "hoist." Exact dates for the verb's earliest appearance in print are uncertain, so the safest picture is a shared Old English ancestry, with the Scots forms preserving sounds and senses that standard English has lost.