heave-ho

• heave ho, heave-o

From Middle English have howe.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌhiv ˈhoʊ/
• Rhymes: -əʊ

heave-ho

1. An exclamation used when pulling, especially by sailors while pulling on a rope.

   Synonym: yeave-ho

   • 1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “A Bell's Biography”, in The Snow Image and Other Twice Told Tales:

     Heave ho! up they hoisted their prize, dripping with moisture, and festooned with verdant water-moss.

• yo-heave-ho

heave-ho (plural heave-hoes or heave-hos)

1. A cry of heave-ho.
   • 1878 September 7, Dorothy Boulger [as Theo Gift], “An Island Princess”, in All The Year Round, volume 21, number 510, page 240:

     Over the water came the clank and rattle of chains and the "Heave-ho!" of the sailors getting ready for departure.

   • 1898, Francis Hopkinson Smith, “The “Heave Ho” of Lonny Bowles”, in Caleb West, Master Diver‎^[1], Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company:

     The slow, rhythmic movement of the gang to the steady “Heave ho” began again.

2. (informal) An ejection; a forced removal; a dismissal (as from a job or relationship).
   • 1961, Henry Beam Piper, Four-Day Planet, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 13:

     When I was a kid—well, more of a kid than I am now—I used to believe he really was a bishop—unfrocked, of course, or ungaitered, or whatever they call it when they give a bishop the heave-ho.

   • 1993, Bette Pesetsky, The Late Night Muse, HarperPerennial, →ISBN, page 187:

     "My sister, may she rest in peace, might have had a much better life if she had given her husband, Ernie, the heave-ho before she married him," Florence said.

   • 2002 August 8, Days of our Lives:

     Why would you think I'm still seeing Colin Murphy? I gave him the heave-ho, remember?

• to give someone the (old) heave-ho

heave-ho (third-person singular simple present heave-hoes, present participle heave-hoing, simple past and past participle heave-hoed)

1. (informal) To pull forcefully.

   Synonym: yeave-ho

   • 1840, Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast:

     They were heave-ho-ing, stopping and unstopping, pawling, catting, and fishing, for three hours;