Hefting refers to the practice of settling sheep or cattle into a new pasture, by herding them to it repeatedly until they are habituated to their new location and will no longer stray from it. The meaning is clearly explained by this Ayrshire quotation in the Dictionaryof the Scots Language: “Hill sheep, … are ‘hefted'. They become attached to a particular area of pasture by association — and are unlikely to wander far” (1998). Thus we read in S R Crockett's The Standard Bearer (1898): “I had been “hefting” … a double score of lambs which had just been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty upland pastures”.  

Although commonly used of farm livestock, other animals can also be described as hefted – meaning established in a particular location, not necessarily as a result of human involvement. For example, in Isabel Grant's Every-day life on an Old Highland Farm (1769-82) we read: “Within the said Bounds where the ffox shall be hefted and is Destructive”, and from F F Darling's Natural History in the Highlands (1947): “The ground now cleared of sheep was left quiet for a while to let the few deer increase and thoroughly heft themselves”.

Heft can be used of people as well, as in Walter Scott's Redgauntlet (1884): “It may be as well that Alan and you do not meet till he is hefted as it were to his new calling”, and more figuratively, of love in this quotation from Richard Gall's Poems and Songs (a1801): “Nor think that absence can remove My heftit love for Willie fair”.

As a noun, heft can refer to the accustomed pasture itself, as in “An' do thou give to the puir stray thing a weel-hained heff and a beildy [cosy, sheltered] lair” from James Hogg's The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818).  

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries