specifically: a stylized representation of a heart
a card decorated with hearts and flowers
2
a
: a playing card marked with a stylized figure of a red heart
b
hearts plural: the suit comprising cards marked with hearts
the five of hearts
c
hearts plural in form but singular or plural in construction: a game in which the object is to avoid taking tricks (see trickentry 1 sense 4) containing hearts
Noun
I could feel my heart pounding.
He has a bad heart.
He put his hand on his heart.
When she heard the news, her heart filled with joy.
She just couldn't find it in her heart to forgive them.
I felt in my heart that our relationship was never meant to be.
a ruler without a heartHave a heart! Can't you see he needs help?
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Noun
Roth went right for Rubin’s heart, invoking the Paul Skenes Topps MLB Debut Patch autographed one-of-one card that famously sold for $1.11 million to Dick’s Sporting Goods in March.—Larry Holder, New York Times, 22 June 2025 Rather than solely leaning on designing for moneyed families and those with means to drop thousands on new pieces each season, the designer opts to create from his heart.—Robyn Mowatt, Essence, 22 June 2025 Johnson got down to eye level with Ellen to examine her, assessing her joints and range of motion, checking her blood pressure, and listening to her heart and lungs.—Jariel Arvin, Miami Herald, 21 June 2025 About 200 of The Great White Way’s most dazzling performers will guide you down the yellow brick road in a show promising plenty of courage, brains and heart — but not a lot of clothing.—Muri Assunção, New York Daily News, 21 June 2025 See All Example Sentences for heart
Word History
Etymology
Noun and Verb
Middle English hert, from Old English heorte; akin to Old High German herza heart, Latin cord-, cor, Greek kardia
First Known Use
Noun
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a
Verb
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2
Time Traveler
The first known use of heart was
before the 12th century
: a hollow muscular organ of vertebrate animals that by its rhythmic contraction acts as a force pump maintaining the circulation of the blood and that in the human adult is about five inches (13 centimeters) long and three and one half inches (9 centimeters) broad, is of conical form, is placed obliquely in the chest with the broad end upward and to the right and the apex opposite the interval between the cartilages of the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side, is enclosed in a serous pericardium, and consists as in other mammals and in birds of four chambers divided into an upper pair of rather thin-walled atria which receive blood from the veins and a lower pair of thick-walled ventricles into which the blood is forced and which in turn pump it into the arteries
2
: a structure in an invertebrate animal functionally analogous to the vertebrate heart
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