different between herd vs heap

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /h??d/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /h?d/
• Rhymes: -??(?)d
• Homophone: heard

Etymology 1

From Middle English herde, heerde, heorde, from Old English hierd, heord (“herd, flock; keeping, care, custody”), from Proto-Germanic *herd? (“herd”), from Proto-Indo-European *?erd?- (“file, row, herd”). Cognate with German Herde, Swedish hjord. Non-Germanic cognates include Albanian herdhe (“nest”) and Serbo-Croatian krdo.

Noun

herd (plural herds)

1. A number of domestic animals assembled together under the watch or ownership of a keeper. [from 11th c.]
   • 1768, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,

     The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.

2. Any collection of animals gathered or travelling in a company. [from 13th c.]
   • 2007, J. Michael Fay, Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma, National Geographic (March 2007), 47,

     Zakouma is the last place on Earth where you can see more than a thousand elephants on the move in a single, compact herd.

3. (now usually derogatory) A crowd, a mass of people; now usually pejorative: a rabble. [from 15th c.]
   • 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, 8 June 1833

     You can never interest the common herd in the abstract question.

Derived terms

• herd immunity
• herd instinct

Translations

Verb

herd (third-person singular simple present herds, present participle herding, simple past and past participle herded)

1. (intransitive) To unite or associate in a herd; to feed or run together, or in company.

   Sheep herd on many hills.
2. (transitive) To unite or associate in a herd
3. (transitive) To manage, care for or guard a herd

4. (intransitive) To associate; to ally oneself with, or place oneself among, a group or company.

   • I’ll herd among his friends, and seem
     One of the number.

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English herde, from Old English hirde, hierde, from Proto-West Germanic *hird?, from Proto-Germanic *hirdijaz. Cognate with German Hirte, Swedish herde, Danish hyrde.

Noun

herd (plural herds)

1. (now rare) Someone who keeps a group of domestic animals; a herdsman.
   • 2000, Alasdair Grey, The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury 2002, page 38:

     Any talent which gives a good new thing to others is a miracle, but commentators have thought it extra miraculous that England's first known poet was an illiterate herd.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

herd (third-person singular simple present herds, present participle herding, simple past and past participle herded)

1. (intransitive, Scotland) To act as a herdsman or a shepherd.
2. (transitive) To form or put into a herd.
3. (transitive) To move or drive a herd.

Translations

See also

• Appendix:English collective nouns
• drove
• gather
• muster
• round up
• ride herd on

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

herd

1. imperative of herde

Old High German

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *herþ.

Noun

herd m

1. hearth

Descendants

• Middle High German: hert
  • German: Herd
  • Luxembourgish: Häerd

English

Etymology

From Middle English heep, from Old English h?ap, from Proto-West Germanic *haup, from Proto-Germanic *haupaz (compare Dutch hoop, German Low German Hupen, German Haufen), from Proto-Indo-European *koupos (“hill”) (compare Lithuanian ka?pas, Albanian qipi (“stack”), Avestan ????????????????? (kåfa)).

Pronunciation

• enPR: h?p, IPA^(key): /hi?p/
• ((Ireland), dated) enPR: h?p, IPA^(key): /he?p/
• Rhymes: -i?p

Noun

heap (plural heaps)

1. A crowd; a throng; a multitude or great number of people.
   • 1623, Francis Bacon, An Advertisement touching an Holy War

     a heap of vassals and slaves

   • 1876, Anthony Trollope, s:Doctor Thorne

     He had plenty of friends, heaps of friends in the parliamentary sense

2. A pile or mass; a collection of things laid in a body, or thrown together so as to form an elevation.

   • Huge heaps of slain around the body rise.
3. A great number or large quantity of things.
   • 1679, Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England

     a vast heap, both of places of scripture and quotations

   • 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, s:Will o' the Mill

     I have noticed a heap of things in my life.

4. (computing) A data structure consisting of trees in which each node is greater than all its children.
5. (computing) Memory that is dynamically allocated.

6. (colloquial) A dilapidated place or vehicle.
   • 1991 May 12, "Kidnapped!" Jeeves and Wooster, Series 2, Episode 5:

     Chuffy: It's on a knife edge at the moment, Bertie. If he can get planning permission, old Stoker's going to take this heap off my hands in return for vast amounts of oof.

7. (colloquial) A lot, a large amount

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:lot

Hyponyms

• compost heap

Derived terms

• heapful
• heapmeal
• it takes a heap of living to make a house a home

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: ipi

Translations

Verb

heap (third-person singular simple present heaps, present participle heaping, simple past and past participle heaped)

1. (transitive) To pile in a heap.

2. (transitive) To form or round into a heap, as in measuring.
   • 1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, Act I, scene II, verses 40-42

     Cry a reward, to him who shall first bring
     News of that vanished Arabian,
     A full-heap’d helmet of the purest gold.

3. (transitive) To supply in great quantity.

Synonyms

• (pile in a heap): amass, heap up, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up

Derived terms

• heap coals of fire on someone's head
• heaped (adj), heaping (adj)
• heap up
• overheap

Translations

Adverb

heap (not comparable)

1. (offensive, representing broken English stereotypically or comically attributed to Native Americans) Very.
   • 1980, Joey Lee Dillard, Perspectives on American English (page 417)

     We are all familiar with the stereotyped broken English which writers of Western stories, comic strips, and similar literature put into the mouths of Indians: 'me heap big chief', 'you like um fire water', and so forth.

   • 2004, John Robert Colombo, The Penguin Book of Canadian Jokes (page 175)

     Once upon a time, a Scotsman, an Englishman, and an Irishman are captured by the Red Indians […] He approaches the Englishman, pinches the skin of his upper arm, and says, "Hmmm, heap good skin, nice and thick.

Anagrams

• HAPE, HEPA, epha, hep A

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *haup, from Proto-Germanic *haupaz.

Cognate with Old Frisian h?p, Old Saxon h?p, Old High German houf. Old Norse hópr differs from the expected form *haupr because it is a borrowing from Middle Low German.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /xæ???p/, [hæ???p]

Noun

h?ap m

1. group
   • late 10th century, Ælfric, "The Nativity of St. Paul the Apostle"

2. heap

Declension

Derived terms

• h?apm?lum

Descendants

• Middle English: heep
  • English: heap

Portuguese

Etymology

From English heap

Noun

heap m or f (in variation) (plural heaps)

1. (computing) heap (tree-based data structure)

West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian h?p, from Proto-West Germanic *haup, from Proto-Germanic *haupaz (“heap”).

Noun

heap c (plural heapen or heappen, diminutive heapke)

1. heap, pile
2. mass, gang, horde

Further reading

• “heap”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011