Definition of "heft"

a man of his age and heft

1859, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients

Unlike most moons of the solar system, ours has the heft, the gravitational gravitas, to pull itself into a sphere.

2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face”, in The New York Times‎

he skull was an awkward armload. Bizarrely, its size, shape, and long, narrow bill brought to mind the head of Big Bird from Sesame Street, but with none of bird-bone’s lightness: It had heft and density.

2021 March 30, J. B. MacKinnon, “An Entire Group of Whales Has Somehow Escaped Human Attention”, in The Atlantic‎

Put more baldly, the reason why Republicans and British Conservatives started giving each other copies of Atlas Shrugged in the 80s was that Rand seemed to grant intellectual heft to the prevailing ethos of the time.

2017 April 10, Jonathan Freedland, “The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley”, in The Guardian‎

He cracks his gorge, his sides, / With violent hefts.

c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene i]

The turkey's nest was islanded with a fragrant swath , the “heft” of the crop noted and rejoiced over.

1865, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, The Gayworthys: a Story of Threads and Thrums

The size of "hefts" will depend on the material requiring attention, and the annual volume is to cost about 15 marks.

1900, The Nation, volume 70