The Etymology (Origin) of “Heck”
I want to say WTH but it’s become a cliché for me so I’ll state my theory on how the word came into being instead. As you ought to know, people in the English-speaking community have this expression, what the. More specifically, there’s what the hell and what the fuck. The way I absorb it, what the heck originated from the two — “he” from hell and “ck” from fuck. Perhaps the main reason that the word, or should I say the whole expression, was brought up is for it to become more acceptable and neutral (whatever). With all honesty, I haven’t read anything about this yet. I actually kind of firmly believe that my guess is true. :tongue:
. . .
In my previous post I was talking about getting too much excited about Friday. Now, I don’t think I’ll ever be wishing for that day to come again. Haha. Last Friday was the worst session we had. It finally convinced me that there really is such thing as a drunk person and not being able to remember everything (or anything at all!) the following day. The dorm staff that night even had to check up on me. Luckily, we were still not summoned by the dorm manager to discuss it. We didn’t do any damage to the dorm nor to any resident after all. The only thing that I’m regretting about is the fact that I lost my ATM cards that night. I have no idea how it got away out of my pocket. Now, I am absolutely broke. I badly need a big amount of money especially for the coming Y4iT — registration fee and transportation fare — this September in UP Diliman. Somebody, help me! If I need to resort to prostitution then I’d be very glad to. 😆 :laugh: J/K
13 Comments
August 6, 2008 at 15:28
prostitution?? oh cmon. hindi ka benta paredoods
August 6, 2008 at 22:43
Yeah, right.
August 7, 2008 at 21:16
oo nga noh? xD you got a point there. hahahaha. he + ck.. galing. xD how did you come up with that idea?
cancel your account before somebody gets your atm! DDD: prostitution.. lol xD! hey you just gave me an idea in case i ran out of money. HAHAHA.
August 11, 2008 at 12:14
hmmmmm I never thought of heck that way..fuel…what the fuel doesn’t sound as good.
cancel your credit account now!
August 13, 2008 at 13:03
about your atm, you can just call your bank and disable the card itself lang. You can still ask for a new atm card naman eh.
about the “heck”, that’s possible but we don’t really know… Dati, I thought FTW means “Fuck The What?” but it’s “For the Win” pala. But someone told me that “Fuck the What?” is acceptable.. so we really don’t know since this is internet and we can define almost anything.
August 13, 2008 at 18:06
hahaha talaga eh. with your looks and all. 50 pesos ka lang tsong
August 14, 2008 at 13:00
Yeah, right. :laugh:
~ yoshishikko
August 17, 2008 at 18:03
oh weeee. na-trace mo ang ip address ng netopia! congrats. haha
August 18, 2008 at 13:07
Cheers!
October 2, 2009 at 18:13
According to the residents of Iceland, the English word Heck originates from the name of a volcano, Hekla which was known as throughout the Christian world as the location of the gates to hell. I was told that “go to to Hekla” or similar was often used to mean “go to Hell”.
February 2, 2012 at 23:24
The etymology of heck is cloudier than it needs to be – some of the major dictionaries say no more than that it’s a euphemistic variation of hell.
In fact, it’s Scottish – hech is a Scots interjection of surprise or shock, and is ultimately the same word as hey (or heigh).
I’ve just seen one rather outrageous suggestion on the Interwebs that it’s a portmanteau made out of hell and fuck. Nonsense.
As for Mary of Heck, she was in fact Mary of Teck. Teck is a castle in Germany, and Duke of Teck – which Mary’s father was – was a courtesy title bestowed upon the son of the Duke of Württemberg.
Even so, she was in no real sense from Teck – Mary was born and raised in London.
February 22, 2012 at 20:29
I understood that ‘Heck’ originates from the (northern English, presumably Old English) phrase “By Heck!” which I believe was a contraction of “By Hecate!” – Hecate being a god of spirits and witchcraft. Much like “By Jove!” where Jove = Jupiter = Zeus.
June 8, 2014 at 10:46
Heck derives from a man named Thomas Heck who was a Cattle Inspector in the late 1800s. His job was to cull out cattle that were unfit or obviously rustled.
A cattle Baron shot him with two blasts from a shotgun at point blank range but Heck survived. Heck put out a $500 reward for His would be killer and he was delivered quickly. Heck tied the guy to a fence and spent hours using him as target practice (while drinking) and finally put a bullet through his head.
Heck sliced off the man’s ears and used them as a watch fob for many years until a posse of cattle rustlers Lynched him.
His Wife Embalmed him in alcohol and he is now buried in Utah near Salt Lake City.
The target practice he did on his would-be killer was phrased as “Giving them Heck” and it has stuck around through time.