Some Misused Words.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 471, 4 June 1932, Page 8

Some Misused Words.

CORRESPONDENT writes:—One fre-

quently comes across the expression: “He is at home on his native heath.” In Harold Bindloss’s latest book, “ Right of Way,” a Cumberland story, it is explained, in reply to a remark regarding “my native heaf,” that a heaf is a belt of moorland on which- a hill sheep feeds, and, as a rule, from which it refuses to stray. Is heath or heaf correct? “ Touchstone ” can find no “ heaf ” in available English dictionaries and, although very chary of jumping to conclusions, feels safe in assuming that heaf is merely a corruption of heath. The word heath, from the Anglo-Saxon haeth, is applied to open land overgrown with shrubs of the heath family, or any uncultivated, desolate tract covered with shrubs and coarse herbage. Some other correspondent may be able to trace the phrase “ his foot is on his native heath.” TOUCHSTONE.