The Collaborative International Dictionary
Heave \Heave\ (h[=e]v), v. i.
-
To be thrown up or raised; to rise upward, as a tower or mound.
And the huge columns heave into the sky.
--Pope.Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap.
--Gray.The heaving sods of Bunker Hill.
--E. Everett. -
To rise and fall with alternate motions, as the lungs in heavy breathing, as waves in a heavy sea, as ships on the billows, as the earth when broken up by frost, etc.; to swell; to dilate; to expand; to distend; hence, to labor; to struggle.
Frequent for breath his panting bosom heaves.
--Prior.The heaving plain of ocean.
--Byron. -
To make an effort to raise, throw, or move anything; to strain to do something difficult.
The Church of England had struggled and heaved at a reformation ever since Wyclif's days.
--Atterbury. -
To make an effort to vomit; to retch; to vomit. To heave at.
To make an effort at.
-
To attack, to oppose. [Obs.]
--Fuller.To heave in sight (as a ship at sea), to come in sight; to appear.
To heave up, to vomit. [Low]
Usage examples of "to heave at".
Under the first Watchman's urgings they shuffled over to heave at the big wheel that raised the thick bar across the gates, then turned their efforts to cranking the gates open.
But at least they represented thirty out of the two hundred and fifty additional human bodies which he needed to drag at ropes and to heave at capstan bars so as to take this old Sutherland out to sea.
Three times already some of them had had to heave at the truck to get it through bad places, and twice the truck had had to nudge the Corvette out of spots in which its tires just spun.
The Mouser started to heave at the anchor but Fafhrd slashed the line with a knife snatched from the Mouser's belt and jerked up the sail in swift, swishing rushes.