Words starting with H

152 words.

• habiliment Clothes, especially clothing appropriate for someone's job, status, or to an occasion.
• habilitation Equipment; qualification.
• habitacle A dwelling or habitation.
• habitude The essential character of one's being or existence; native or normal constitution; mental or moral
• haboku A technique of using splashed ink in brushwork painting, especially for painting a landscape.
• haboob A violent duststorm or sandstorm in the deserts of Arabia, North Africa, India, or North America.
• haecceity The essence of a particular thing that gives it its unique particularity; those qualities that make
• haenyeo A female diver in South Korea who works harvesting molluscs, seaweed, etc.
• hafter A maker of handles for knives and other tools
• hajib An official of a Muslim court, of varied importance, initially controlling access to the caliph, but
• halala A wedlease (temporary marriage) to a stranger undertaken prior to remarriage to an ex, that is to ma
• halecret A kind of light armour protecting the bust, used in the 16th century, usually thought to have been a
• halidom Holiness; sanctity; sacred honour.
• halistatic Concerning an area of a sea or ocean that has no currents passing through it, especially the area at
• halse To fall upon the neck of; hug; embrace.
• haltere A small knobbed structure in some two-winged insects, one of a pair that are flapped rapidly and fun
• hamartia The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy.
• hamiform Curved at the extremity.
• handfast A hold, grasp; custody, power of confining or keeping.
• handgift A gift given directly (i.e. by hand), usually to a newly wedded couple; a wedding gift
• handgonne A handheld pre-matchlock black-powder gun.
• handlanger An unskilled assistant to an artisan.
• handtame To cause (someone or something) to become accustomed to being handled
• handwavium Any hypothetical but unobtainable material with desirable engineering properties.
• hanse That part of an elliptical or many-centred arch which has the shorter radius and immediately adjoins
• hantle A considerable number or quantity; a great many; a great deal.
• hapchance Chance, luck, fortune; the random or unplanned quality of an event. (frequently in by hapchance)
• harmattan A dry and dusty wind which blows from the Sahara over the Atlantic coast of West Africa in December,
• haruspicy Divination by use of animal entrails, usually the victims of sacrifice.
• hassock A dense clump of grass or vegetation; a tussock.
• hatcheck A room, in a theatre or other such venue, in which hats and other garments of the patrons may be sto
• hatchel A comb used to separate flax fibers.
• haugh A low-lying meadow by the side of a river.
• hauntology A concept involving the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past.
• haustement A close-fitting undergarment, over which the armor (and hose) were fastened.
• haveli A type of private mansion in India and Pakistan.
• havildar An noncommissioned officer rank in parts of India, later a specific military rank of the British Ind
• haviour Demeanour, behaviour, comportment.
• haybote An allowance of wood to a tenant for repairing hedges or fences.
• hazarder One who ventures or hazards.
• headly Chief; principal; capital; (of sins) deadly.
• healand One who heals or saves; a saviour.
• healful Tending or serving to heal; health-promoting; healing.
• hearsomeness Obedience; submission to authority.
• heartsore Heartache, misery, grief.
• hebdomad A group of seven.
• hebetate To render obtuse; to dull; to blunt.
• hebetudinous Displaying mental lethargy or dullness.
• hecatomb A great public sacrifice to the gods, originally of a hundred oxen; also, a great number of animals
• hectograph To duplicate (a document) by this process.
• heddle To thread each strand of the warp through the eye of a heddle.
• heffalump (A child's name for) an elephant.
• hegira A journey taken to escape from danger; an exodus.
• hegumen The head of a monastery of the Eastern Orthodox Church or Eastern Catholic Churches.
• heisenbug A software bug which fails to manifest itself or manifests differently during debugging.
• helicline A curving or spiral-shaped ramp; (especially) the ramp at the 1939 New York World's Fair Theme Cente
• helicopteron A flying machine having an aerial screw propeller.
• heliostat A device that includes a plane mirror which turns so as to keep reflecting sunlight toward a predete
• hellier One who heles or covers; hence, a tiler, slater, or thatcher.
• helve The handle or haft of a tool or weapon.
• hemerology The study of calendars, especially with a view to identifying propitious days.
• hemoclysm A violent and bloody conflict, a bloodbath; specifically (chiefly with capital initial), the period
• hendiadys A figure of speech used for emphasis, where two words joined by and are used to express a single com
• henotheism Belief in or worship of one deity without denying the existence of other deities.
• heortology The study of religious festivals.
• hepatize To impregnate with sulphureted hydrogen gas (formerly called hepatic gas).
• heptameride A thing having seven parts or divisions.
• heresiarch The founder of a heresy, or a major ecclesiastical proponent of such a heresy.
• heriot To pay the heriot on (a piece of real estate) after the death of the previous tenant (such as one's
• heritor A person who inherits; an heir or heiress.
• hermeneut A practitioner of hermeneutics, someone who interprets a text, especially a holy text.
• herry To honour, praise or celebrate.
• herse A kind of gate or portcullis, having iron bars, like a harrow, studded with iron spikes, hung above
• hesternal Of or pertaining to yesterday.
• heteroclite Irregularly declined or inflected.
• hexacle A circumscribed hexagram.
• hexacosichoron A four-dimensional object analogous to an icosahedron, constructed out of six hundred tetrahedra, ar
• hexadecachoron A four-dimensional object analogous to an octahedron, constructed out of sixteen tetrahedra.
• hexameron The six days in which God created the world according to the biblical creation story.
• hibernaculum The place where a hibernating animal shelters for the winter.
• hierophant An ancient Greek priest who interpreted sacred mysteries, especially the priest of the Eleusinian My
• hierophany A physical manifestation of the holy or sacred, serving as a spiritual eidolon for emulation or wors
• hiraeth A feeling of homesickness, longing or yearning for something comfortable or familiar, especially in
• hirple To walk with a limp, to drag a limb, to walk lamely; to move with a gait somewhere between walking a
• hispid Covered in short, stiff hairs.
• hithe A landing-place on a river; a harbour or small port.
• hobbledehoy An awkward adolescent youth.
• hodiernal Of or pertaining to the present day or today; hodiern.
• hokum (An instance of) meaningless nonsense with an outward appearance of being impressive and legitimate.
• holard The total water content of a sample of soil
• holmgang In Norse and Icelandic culture, a duel to the death.
• holon Something that is both a part and a whole.
• holopresence Ability to project a holographic representation into a physical space, creating the illusion of bein
• homeophony Phonic similarity; the quality of being similar-sounding.
• homeoteleuton The repetition of endings in words; near rhyme.
• homiletics The art of preaching (especially the application of rhetoric in theology).
• hominism An entirely human world-view, with no elements that do not reflect human senses and experience, espe
• homoglyph A character identical or nearly identical in appearance to another, but which differs in the meaning
• homoiousian One of the Semi-Arians of the 4th century who held that the Son was of like, but not the same, essen
• homoousian One of those, in the 4th century, who accepted the Nicene Creed and maintained that the Son had the
• homothety An isotropic scaling transformation of an affine space with a single fixed point.
• hondel To bargain; to haggle.
• hoopla A bustling to-do, excited speech or noise.
• hoplophobia The irrational fear of guns.
• hopniss Apios americana, a perennial vine that bears edible beans and large edible tubers.
• hoppo The imperial Chinese board of revenue, especially its branch in Guangzhou during the Qing Dynasty.
• horcrux In Harry Potter, an object in which a wizard has concealed a part of their soul through magic, rende
• horometry horology (the art or practice of measuring time).
• horrent Standing upright, like bristles; bristled; bristly.
• horripilate To bristle in fear or horror; to have goose bumps or goose pimples.
• horsefeathers Nonsense; indicates disbelief.
• hortative Urging, exhorting, or encouraging.
• hosen Coverings for the legs; trousers; pants.
• hospitate To receive with hospitality; to provide lodging to a guest.
• hotch To move irregularly up and down.
• houndish Like, pertaining to, or characteristic of a hound; doggish; canine.
• hounskull A type of visor, drawn out into a conical point like a muzzle or beak which improved ventilation and
• housel To administer the Eucharist to.
• howadji A traveller or merchant from the Middle East
• howbeit Be that as it may; nevertheless.
• howdah A seat, usually with a canopy, carried on the back of an elephant or camel.
• huissier A doorman; a domestic officer who guarded the doors to chambers in a mansion or similar large establ
• huitlacoche Corn smut prepared as a delicacy.
• huldre A type of supernatural being in the shape of a beautiful woman with a cow's tail.
• humdinger Something that is particularly outstanding, unusual, or exceptional.
• humectant Any substance that promotes the retention of water, especially one used to keep a food product moist
• humet A fesse or bar cut off short at each end.
• humicubation The act or practice of lying on the ground.
• hummel A stag that has failed to grow antlers; a cow that has not developed horns.
• hundredman A person overseeing one hundred others; (especially) a man overseeing a hundred-strong army.
• hupaithric Roofless; open to the sky.
• hurly noise; confusion; uproar
• hurple An impediment similar to a limp.
• hurriquake An incidence of a hurricane and an earthquake occurring in quick succession.
• husbandland The landholding of a husbandman, that is, a manorial tenant.
• hustlement Miscellaneous household items; odds and ends.
• huxen The hough; the back of the hip.
• hwatu Hanafuda playing cards, especially hard plastic cards in a Korean style.
• hydromancy Divination by water or other liquid.
• hypaethral Open-air, outdoor, exposed to the sky.
• hypepriest A celebrity priest or pastor who dresses fashionably; a hypebeast priest.
• hyperborean One of a race of people living in the extreme north, beyond the north wind.
• hypergelast Someone who laughs excessively.
• hypergolic Igniting spontaneously upon contact with an oxidizer.
• hyperlect The variety of a language that is spoken by the aristocracy.
• hyperphantasia A condition where one's mental imagery (the mind's eye) is extremely realistic, to the point of conf
• hyperthymesia A rare condition in which a person possesses a superior autobiographical memory and is able to recal
• hypnagogic That induces sleep; soporific, somniferous.
• hypnopaedia Teaching (or learning) by subconscious means.
• hypocorism A term of endearment, often a diminutive; a pet name.
• hypogeum An underground room or cavern (also used figuratively).
• hypothecate To pledge (something) as surety for a loan; to pawn, mortgage.