heil
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /haɪl/
rhymes: -aɪl
Forms: form: heils
Etymology: Borrowed from German Heil. Doublet of whole, hail, and hale.
Senses: examples: text: Nazi “heils,” Nazi songs and Nazi swastikas are distasteful to most democracy-loving citizens.
ref: 1937, Pathfinder, volume 44, Farm Journal, Incorporated, page 15, column 1:
text: Health, Hitler, heils, and hatred are the “four H’s” used by United States Nazis to prevent Americanization of children whose parents are members of the German-American Bund.
ref: 1938, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Hearings Before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-Fifth Congress, Third Session, on H. Res. 282, volume 1, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, page 1123:
text: Newsdealer Isador Gennett, the Bronx Jewish war veteran who created an international stir last October by laying a wreath at the German war memorial in Berlin to the accompaniment of Nazi “heils,” came to the defense of a fellow newsdealer, Joseph Ohmann, a German Catholic, by picketing his newsstand to prove he is not, as has been charged, a Nazi.
ref: 1938, The Advocate: America’s Jewish Journal, volume 94, page 22, column 1:
text: “Meanwhile,” said the Evening News, “the new German-Soviet entente presents a baffling picture. We see Herr Ribbentrop, the arch enemy of Communism and the life and soul of the Anti-Comintern Pact, who once referred to Communism as ‘the most terrible of all diseases,’ presenting himself on the doorstep of a be-swastika’d Moscow while the German Embassy staff greets him with ‘heils’ and Nazi salutes and the Russian-in-the-street looks on in silent but respectful astonishment.[…]”
ref: 1940, Elswyth Thane, “Here We Go Again”, in England Was an Island Once, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, page 227:
text: […] who simply walked out of the camp dressed as German guards, duplicating Nazi heils, the goosestep and other mannerisms.
ref: 1946, The Polish Review and East European Affairs, volume 6, page 6, column 2:
text: Later I drove to the meeting and talked for two hours. Tremendous applause. Then heils and hand-clapping.
ref: 1948, Louis P[aul] Lochner, transl., The Goebbels Diaries, New York, N.Y.: Charter, page 15:
text: While frantic “heils” burst forth […]
ref: 1979, Gene Brown, editor, The New York Times Encyclopedia of Sports: Track and Field, Arno Press, →ISBN, page 76:
text: Occasionally, however, the results are somewhat questionable: the four-minute overture-⁠-comprised of slowly rising Nazi "heils"-⁠-which precedes the credits, for example, seems little more than an irritating delay; it is usually deleted when the film is shown on television.
ref: 1987, Thomas J. Harris, Courtroom’s Finest Hour in American Cinema, Metuchen, N.J.; London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 132:
text: When they were finished, they raised their arms in the salute Hider stole from Mussolini, and thundered their heils to the heavens.
ref: 1991, Margot Abbott, The Last Innocent Hour, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 145:
text: By now, the SS, Storm Section, Hitler Youth and Nazi suspects were like the crowd at a Hitler rally. Their mouths were a row of red circles, as open as megaphone ends. To look at, the men could be singing, marching, stomping over the flopping remains of Shlomo’s father, mother, brothers, giving their heils, and Shlomo now hated them.
ref: 1993, John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945, BasicBooks, →ISBN, page 103:
text: Three days later, in the Mailbag of May 14, Pauline Avery Crawford made her decision: / Sing a song of sick pacts, / A pocket full of lies, / War and twenty blackmails / Baked by the spies; / When the war was opened / The spies began their heils / Until a Yankee Eagle flew / Across three thousand miles.
ref: 2006, Ronald Weber, “The Dear Paris Herald”, in News of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Light Between the Wars, Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, →ISBN, page 71:
text: He wasn’t a boy, a feckless common soldier, he was a wolf. Hitler’s werewolves, the colonel called them, and they saluted with their heils and expected victory.
ref: 2013, Carrie Vaughn, “Unternehmen Werwolf”, in Paula Guran, editor, Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, Prime Books, →ISBN, page 90:
glosses: A Sieg Heil.
Derived terms: Daily Heil