Meanings
het1
plural hets
- countableslangA heterosexual person.
See how you like that you townie het from southeastern MA / Saying "fairy" and "Mark Wahlberg" like it's southie any day
2020, “metal”, in food house, performed by food house - slanguncountablelifestyleFan fiction involving characters in an opposite-sex romantic or sexual relationship.
Other studies explore why some women write het, or fictions with heterosexual pairings of certain couples, within canons such as Star Trek Voyager that generally inspire slash fiction (Somogyi, 2002).
2010, Rebecca Ward Black, “Just Don't Call Them Cartoons: The New Literacy Spaces of Anime, Manga, and Fanfiction”, in Julie Coiro, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, Donald J. Leu, editors, Handbook of Research on New Literacies, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, →ISBN, page 5952 more examples
Mary Ellen Curtin presented a paper at the 2002 Popular Culture Association conference in which she studied fanfiction archives to discover that black characters appeared far less in both het and slash fiction than white or even Latino/a characters.
2005, Rhiannon Bury, Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online, Peter Lang, published 2005, →ISBN, page 207The vast majority of fan fiction is het or slash, and these types are usually defined against each other as approaches to romance and porn, marginalizing gen as something outside of the dominant concerns of fan fiction.
2006, Catherine Driscoll, “One True Pairing: The Romance of Pornography and the Pornography of Romance”, in Karen Hellekson, Kristina Busse, editors, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 84Synonyms: hetfic
comparative more het · superlative most het
- slangHeterosexual.
het2
- dialectalparticiplepastsimple past and past participle of heat
comparative more het · superlative most het
- dialectalHeated.
het3
- West Countrydialectalespeciallyuncountabledialectal form of heat (“hotness”)
het4
present singular third person hets · participle present hetting · participle past hetted · past hetted
- West Countrydialectalespeciallydialectal form of heat (“to make hot”)
het5
plural hets
- abbreviationclippingClipping of heterozygous.
For sale: Albino hognose female $20k. Hets $12.5k for pair.
- abbreviationclippingnot comparableClipping of heterozygous.
het6
HET7
- abbreviationinitialismInitialism of Historical Enquiries Team.
Het8
- pluralplural onlyAny of a number of nomadic groups from the Argentine Pampas and Patagonia.
Synonyms & antonyms
nounFan fiction involving characters in an opposite-sex romantic or sexual relationship.
More synonyms by meaning
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
het · noun, adjective
- Proto-Indo-European*sem-
- Proto-Indo-European*sḿ̥teros
- Proto-Hellenic*hə́teros
- Ancient Greekἕτερος (héteros)
- Englishhetero-
- Proto-Indo-European*sek-
- Proto-Indo-European*séks-u-s
- Proto-Italic*seksus
- Proto-Indo-European*sek-
- Proto-Indo-European*sékh₁yeti
- Proto-Italic*sekaō
- Latinsecō
- Latinsecāre?
- Latinsexus
- Proto-Indo-European*h₂el-
- Proto-Indo-European*h₂élisder.?
- Latinsexuālis
- Englishsexual
- Englishheterosexualclip.
- Englishhet
Clipping of heterosexual.
Full word history & related roots →het · verb, adjective
- Middle Englishhet
- Middle Englishhette
- Englishhet
From Middle English hette (simple past), het (past participle), from Old English hǣtte (simple past), (ġe)hǣted (past participle), conjugations of hǣtan (“to heat”); see heat (“to make hot”).
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with het
Anagrams
Cite this entry
het. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/het
“het.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/het. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “het,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/het.
Source: het on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.