heck

noun, = ‘hell’, in asseverations and emphatic expressions (“heck, n.3 and int.” OED); phrases ‘like heck’, ‘heck of a lot’, ‘raise heck’, ‘what(ever) the heck’, ‘who the heck’

“Don’t tell nobody, ’cause I’ll get in heck.”

“Dad had pigs. He always raised pigs.When the mother was gonna have pigs, it would be colder than heck, and we’d have to bring — if the barn were cold — we’d have to bring them in and put them behind the wood stove to keep warm.”

“Now, my friend’s in a heck of a predicament right now.”

“I’ll sit down with all these people or sit down with god and figure out the real story about all of this stuff, ’cause it’s going to be as interesting as heck, because they all got a story.”

“Would you row that far? You had to be a heck of a good man to do that.”

“He got on the internet searching around and sending inquiries to all the antique boat associations around and finally got a reply from somebody in Toronto with a picture of the boat that sure as heck looked like it.”

“I’ll guarantee you there’ll be some Monday morning they’ll say, ‘To heck with it. We’re not gonna run any buses ’til we get another five per cent increase’.”

like heck

“Well she could ride like heck then. Just jump on and away she go.”

“We used to work like heck to get the amount of hay done that we had so we could go and go swimming at night.”

“The pigs would winter right in that strawstack. I remember Tom’s dad had an old sow pig. She’d go into that strawstack, you couldn’t even see her. She just burrow right in there. And the only time she’d come out would be to get something to eat, eh? She’d come out and get something to eat, and then a real cold day she’d be heading back to the old strawstack squealing like heck ’cause it was so cold, you know!”

heck of a lot

“There’s a heck of a lot of newcomers.”

“In those days it was a heck of a lot colder than it is these winters, I’ll tell you.”

“I had to stick my hands in all the acid.”
“Your bare hands?”
“No, I had two pair of gloves on — made a heck of a lot of difference.”

“It’s a heck of a lot more than I’ve got here.”

raise heck

“‘Cause they would have raised heck, you know, with all that beer.”

what(ever) the heck

“I had a run in with a bull one time. It was a real surprise. I know that ’cause kind of I was winded, and I didn’t get up for a few seconds, and I thought — what the heck is going on? ‘Cause I knew he was behind me, but fortunately he just backed away and looked at me, and I got up and walked away from him.”

“What the heck’s the name of the town that they flooded down there? Had to move everybody out of it. There was one town they even had to move the cemeteries and everything. They flooded the whole area when they changed The Seaway around.”

“Whatever the heck was needed for communities, it was in each community. It wasn’t like now. You might have something manufactured in Ottawa or Toronto but nothing in between … All the necessities were manufactured on-site basically.”

“In the spring of the year, with that old road, when it was wet, we’d walk down, get on the old Duke [ship], go to town, get groceries, bring them home. And Belyea’s always had a big cooler that they put the fish in, and we’d leave the stuff that had to be left there. And walk all the way back to that lighthouse, carrying bags. And then the next day, Dad’d bring the boat down — whatever the heck you hired — to get the rest of it home. And it was tough. It was really tough, you know?”

“They travel around and they go to different little places — Piccadilly, Sunbury, somewhere called — what in the heck is it? Something ‘cowboy’. ‘Cowboy Heaven’.”

“What was her name? She was associated with him somehow or other. It wasn’t Smith? What the heck!”

“Always going to do it later. Then as later comes on you say, ‘Oh why, what the heck, why bother, eh’.”

“Ah, so you’re phoning to find out what the heck is going on, and they are charging you.”

“They were more worried about, you know, getting through the winter, making sure they, you know, got things done. Like, what the heck, you know? Whether you’re British or American, who cares. You know, like just get on with our lives.”

“I’d been thinking, whatever in the heck happened to my old buddy? Like it must be forty years since I’ve seen him.”

“So, you know, being in a new town with no friends or whatever I thought, what the heck, I’ll go to the airport for something to do and got my pilot’s license, so that’s how I got into flying but never did it for business or anything.”

“That barn came from Len — what the heck? — it came from their farm.”

“Anyhow, where the heck was I? I was talking about… What was I talking about? I got off on that tangent.”

who the heck

“Might be our biggest drawback, who the heck knows.”

“I don’t know who the heck they all were.”

“I forget who the heck all was there, but Nancy was the next teacher.”