Weight, bulk.

1

1558.  

        A swarme of bees beset the bower,
And fast with feete in cluster clung,
And on the top with heft they hung.
Phaer’s ‘Æneid.’ (N.E.D.)    

2

1824.  It began to rain on Tuesday, but the heft of the rain fell on Wednesday night.—Somerset (Me.) Journal, Feb. 13, p. 3/1.

3

1838.  I want nothing but to get out of this tarnation basket. I calculate that my heft will be too much for it. Every time it knocks agin the house it jounces my life out.—Caroline Gilman, ‘Recollections of a Southern Matron,’ p. 43 (N.Y.).

4

1846.  

        Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in,
But arterwards don’t weigh the heft of a pin.
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ No. 4.    

5

1856.  And he ’s to his shop the heft o’ the time.—Whitcher, ‘The Widow Bedott Papers,’ No. 10.

6

1856.  It ’s slazy though, ther ain’t much heft to ’t.—Id., No. 11.

7

1856.  He kin whip his heft in wild-cats every day.—Weekly Oregonian, Nov. 1.

8

1857.  I ’m sure it is n’t empty!… for he lifted it as if it was a heft.—Knick. Mag., l. 606 (Dec.).

9

1869.  [The scales] pointed to three pounds as the “heft” of the little stranger.—A. K. McClure, ‘Rocky Mountains,’ p. 244.

10

1878.  Ye hain’t calkerlated for the heft o’ them fellers—governors and colonels and ministers weighs putty heavy.—H. B. Stowe, ‘Poganuc People,’ ch. xvii.

11