# heath

Pronunciation: US say "HEETH" /hiːθ/; UK

## Noun

1. An area of open, level, uncultivated land with sandy soil and scrubby vegetation.
   - Simple: A wide, flat area of wild land with sandy soil and low bushes.
   - _The army trained on the heath because nothing grew there but gorse and heather._
   - _Many of the region's lowland heaths were plowed up for farmland in the last century._
2. Any of various small evergreen shrubs of the heather family (Ericaceae) and related plants, such as Erica, Cassiope, Daboecia, Phyllodoce, and the Australian heaths Epacris and Leucopogon.
   - Simple: A small evergreen bush, like heather, that grows on open land and often has tiny bell-shaped flowers.
   - _Low heath grew thickly between the rocks on the windswept slope._
   - _The nursery sells a dozen kinds of heath for rock gardens._
3. Any of several butterflies or moths called heaths, especially brown butterflies of the genus Coenonympha (such as the small and large heath) and moths such as the common and latticed heath.
   - Simple: Any of several small butterflies or moths called heaths, often found on open land.
   - _By morning the moth trap held two heaths among the dozen species we identified._
   - _On sunny days in June, the small heath is one of the most common butterflies on the open hills._

## Origin

The root is Proto-Indo-European *kayt- ("forest, wasteland, pasture"). It gave Proto-Germanic *haiþī ("heath, waste, untilled land") and Proto-West Germanic *haiþi, then Old English hǣþ ("heath, heather, untilled land, waste") and Middle English heeth, heth, hethe. Relatives include Dutch heide ("moorland, heath"), German Heide ("moor, heath"), Norwegian hei and Swedish hed ("heath"), and Welsh coed ("forest"), and perhaps also the Latin element -cetum ("place of, grove of") seen in būcētum ("pastureland", literally "cow-pasture").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/heath (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).