Other forms: heeded, heeding, heeds
To heed is to pay careful attention to a warning. Heed the warning, take heed, heed his advice.
It survives mainly in take heed and heed a warning, and it always attaches to advice or danger rather than to ordinary information. It is the positive form of heedless, which is now the commoner of the two.
1verbheedTo pay careful attention to a warning.
“The sailors did not heed the storm warning and set out to sea anyway.”
heed is an attending.
Old English hedan meant to take care of or observe, from a Germanic root.
Proto-Indo-European
*kadʰ- — to heed, protect
Proto-West Germanic
*hōdijan — to heed, guard
Old English
hēdan — to heed, take care, observe, attend, guard, take charge, take possession, receive
Middle English
heden
English, today
heed
From Middle English heden, from Old English hēdan (“to heed, take care, observe, attend, guard, take charge, take possession, receive”), from Proto-West Germanic hōdijan (“to heed, guard”), from Proto-Indo-European kadʰ- (“to heed, protect”). Cognate with West Frisian hoedje (“to heed”), Dutch hoeden (“to heed”), German hüten (“to heed”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA