## Etymology
A noun and verb of the fifteenth century, probably from heave (Old English hebban 'to lift'), formed on the analogy of words like weft from weave or theft from thieve.

## AI Etymology
heft has the recorded history: A noun and verb of the fifteenth century, probably from heave (Old English hebban 'to lift'), formed on the analogy of words like weft from weave or theft from thieve. The history explains the modern form through the named earlier word or formation, without requiring a separate speculative ancestry. The etymology remains cautious where the history is cautious: comparisons, echoic formation, or disputed derivation do not make the ancestry more definite than the forms actually named. In present English, the noun sense is "weight or heaviness; to lift or test the weight of something", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. The same base also appears in related forms such as heave, and in derivatives such as hefty, hefted, and hefting. Its semantic neighborhood includes weight, heaviness, bulk, and ballast, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim. The named historical forms include Old English hebban.

## Topics
- Mathematics & Measurement

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