hearting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of heart.

   The lettuces are hearting up nicely in the cooler weather.

   Fans kept hearting the announcement within seconds of it going live.

   Note

   One spelling serves several quite different verbs. A lettuce or cabbage is hearting when it forms its dense inner cluster, and it takes no object. A fan hearting a post marks it with ❤ or professes fondness, and there is always an object. The builder's verb means filling a wall or breakwater with rubble, and the masonry fill names the material that work leaves behind. The old sense of heartening someone is obsolete.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Rough filling material packed between the more structurally sound outer faces of a wall, especially in masonry construction.

   The masons filled the cavity with rubble hearting before facing the wall with dressed stone.

   Centuries of damp had weakened the hearting inside the cathedral's thick walls.

   Similarinfill, filling, fill

   Note

   A mason's word, and an economical one: the hearting can be the waste of the job itself, rubble knocked off while trimming the face stones and packed back into the core. It usually behaves as a mass noun (some of the hearting, the hearting for the wall), though heartings exists as a plural. Placing it is the work of the builder's verb: to heart a wall with rubble.

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