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Glite Dictionary
💪 To lift with effort 💪 A hard lift 😮‍💨 To sigh deeply 🌊 To rise and fall 🤢 To retch 🤢 A retching spasm 🌊 A rising motion ⬆️ To bulge upward 🪨 A sideways shift
heave

heave

4 7.9
A sudden involuntary effort to vomit with little or no result
  • noun
  • /hiv/
translation icon : arcada
  • Forty-five minutes on your knees with the dry heaves...
  • dry heaves
  • get the heaves
  • go into dry heaves

Examples

  • His middle was wrenched with dry heaves so strong he feared some necessary part of himself might be fetched up.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • I vomited until there was nothing left but dry heaves.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • The fact that walking made his stomach heave was ignored.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • "Are you forcing yourself?" asked the counselor after several more heaves.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • His wife turned bad soon after that—convulsions that nothing could stop, the dry heaves from an empty stomach.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • After feeling nauseous for hours, I experienced a series of heaves that left me exhausted.

  • The medication made him sick, resulting in violent heaves throughout the night.

  • She had a terrible stomach virus, prompting frequent heaves that produced very little vomit.

Synonyms

retch
vsheave
1 8.4

A sudden, uncontrolled movement that tries to make you vomit but often brings nothing up

has identical meaning but differs mainly in wording or form

Idioms

to give the heave-ho
  • Informal
4 8.5

To tell someone to leave their job or to stop using something

Compounds

frost heave
  • UK
8.0

Soil or road that rises when water in the ground freezes and expands

How Violent

vomit
  • NSFW
52 2.3
heave
4 7.9
to gag
5 5.1

Surface Forms

heave singular
heaves plural

Etymology

Heave as a noun comes from the old English hebban 'to lift', so a sudden 'heave' in the stomach is a quick upward lift or spasm as the body tries to vomit. That is why people say they felt a heave before being sick.