The word "heaps" is distinctly kiwi. It's gone from being used to describe an amount of things or objects, to being used interchangeably with "very" or "really".
It's just one of the many words that have developed and taken on new meanings in our lexicon, and something linguistics lecturer Dr Andreea Calude has been researching at the University of Waikato.
She tells us about the evolution of our language.