heel – English noun declension

English noun forms of heel

Noun: heel
Singularheel
Pluralheels

Sample Sentences

  • He [the stag] calls to mind his strength and then his speed, / His winged heels and then his armed head. [1709, John Denham, Coopers-Hill:]
  • He drove the heel of his hand into the man's nose.
  • She'd been wearing heels, and fell backward off her right heel and twisted or broke her ankle. [2008, Kwame Shauku, Wonderful Williams and the Magnificent Seven, page 257:]
  • Opting to improve her odds of making it up the stairs and into the privacy of her room, she kicked off her left heel, and then her right before leaning down to scoop them up. [2011, Candace Irvine, A Dangerous Engagement:]
  • Flat shoes. As she pushed off her left heel and pressed the sole of her foot to the cold floor she looked forward to them. [2015, Alex Blackmore, Killing Eva:]
  • Oh mama, I'm just having fun
  • On the stage in my heels
  • It's where I belong down at the... [2020 April 3, Chappell Roan, Dan Nigro, “Pink Pony Club”performed by Chappell Roan:]
  • the heel of a mast
  • the heel of a vessel
  • And then again the sportsmen would move at an undertaker's pace, when the fox had traversed and the hounds would be at a loss to know which was the hunt and which was the heel [1860, Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage:]
  • the heel of the white loaf [1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:]
  • Boiled mutton was in one, and the heel of a damper in another. [1902, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Bush Studies (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 32:]
  • `Have ye seen,' said Uncle Jobson with basilisk severity, `what's become of the heel of to-day's loaf?' [1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 42:]
  • The bottom half, or the bun heel is placed in the carton, and the pickle slices spread evenly over the meat or cheese. [1996, Ester Reiter, Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan Into the Fryer, page 100:]
  • I grinned at him sneeringly. I was the heel to end all heels. Wait until the man is down, then kick him and kick him again. He's weak. He can't resist or kick back. [1953, Raymond Chandler, chapter 29, in The Long Goodbye:]
  • She should be glad to have him on her side. So why did Godshawk's memories, grumbling again in that substrate of her brain, keep reminding her of heels he'd known, and tricksters? [2011, Philip Reeve, Scrivener's Moon, Scholastic, →ISBN, pages 361–362:]
  • Douglas steams and stammers, a typical film noir heel, while Stone delivers her dialogue with the devilish gleam of a sly actor having a great time. [2022 March 20, Jason Bailey, “‘Basic Instinct’ at 30: A Time Capsule That Can Still Offend”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:]
  • Freedman began his analysis by noting two important facts about professional wrestling: First, that heels triumph considerably more often than do babyfaces[…] [1992, Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, page 158:]
  • Of these there are two Kinds; in the one, that Part which has the greatest Projecture is Concave, and is term'd Doucine, or an Upright Ogee; in the other, the Convex Part has the greatest Projecture; and this is call'd the Heel, or Inverted Ogee. [1722, Claude Perrault, A Treatise of the Five Orders in Architecture, page vii:]
  • There are two kinds—the upright ogee, in which the concave part projects most, and the heel or inverted ogee, which has the convexity most prominent. This last, with its fillet above, is always the upper moulding of a classical cornice. [1846, George William Francis, The Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures:]
  • Talon: Heel moulding or ogee [1891, Vignola, Practical Elementary Treatise on Architecture, page ii:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English hele, from Old English hēla, from Proto-West Germanic *hą̄hilō, from Proto-Germanic *hanhilaz, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *hanhaz (“heel, hock”), equivalent to hock + -le. More at hock.
2. Compare North Frisian haiel, West Frisian hyl, Dutch hiel, German Low German Hiel, Danish and Norwegian hæl, Swedish häl. See: Middle English Nouns 'hele', Old English Nouns 'hēla', Dutch Nouns 'hiel', Swedish Nouns 'häl'.

Verbs referencing "heel"

Danish Nouns hæl, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns hæl.