Heft

Heft, which began as a form of the past tense and participles of the verb Heave - heaved - hove, still exists. There are also two homographs.

Heft is still a noun meaning 'weight', 'heaviness', 'solidity' (~ 'something needing effort to heave it up'). It gives the commoner adjective hefty, meaning 'weighty', 'heavy' or 'ponderous': it implies 'powerful' when applied to players of sports, and can mean 'strenuous' or 'violent' when applied to effort: "He gave the piano a hefty shove".

• There is also a rare separate word meaning a 'fascicle' or the 'signature' of a book. This is discussed in The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English, and is more a loan-word than a separate English one, being largely used to refer to units of publication in German editions. It has a separate German root. The plural, to those who speak German, is hefte: to insist on it in English may seem pedantic.
• In agriculture, a heft is an area of pasture to which a particular flock of sheep or cattle is bound, by habit or breeding; such a flock may be called 'a hefted flock'.
• As a verb, 'to heft' is largely restricted, at least in Britain, to judging the weight of something in the hand.