Heed

//hiːd// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Careful attention. uncountable

    "Then for a few minutes I did not pay much heed to what was said, being terribly straitened for room, and cramped with pain from lying so long in one place."

  2. 2
    paying particular notice (as to children or helpless people) wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To guard, protect. obsolete
  2. 2
    pay close attention to; give heed to wordnet
  3. 3
    To mind; to regard with care; to take notice of; to attend to; to observe. transitive

    "With pleasure Argus the musician heeds."

  4. 4
    To pay attention, care. archaic, intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
mindattentionattentivenessregardattentionabide by

Example

More examples

"The man gave no heed to her loud protest."

Etymology

From Middle English heden, from Old English hēdan (“to heed, take care, observe, attend, guard, take charge, take possession, receive”), from Proto-West Germanic *hōdijan (“to heed, guard”), from Proto-Indo-European *kadʰ- (“to heed, protect”). Cognate with West Frisian hoedje (“to heed”), Dutch hoeden (“to heed”), German hüten (“to heed”).

Related phrases

give heedpay heedpay no heedtake heedpay attention

More for "heed"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.