Höek

Háek is not a widely recognized term in standard linguistic or orthographic references. In common usage it is usually considered a misspelling or variant of háček, the Czech word for the diacritic mark known in English as a caron or hacek.

Háček refers to a diacritic mark that appears as a small V-shaped wedge placed above a letter. It serves to modify the pronunciation of the letter in several Slavic languages that use the Latin script, most notably Czech and Slovak, and is also used in other languages such as Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian to indicate palatalized or postalveolar consonants. Examples include č, š, ř, and ž, representing sounds like /t͡ʃ/, /ʃ/, a rhotic, and /ʒ/ respectively in various languages.

Etymology and usage notes: háček is a diminutive form of háč, meaning hook, from the root related to the word for hook. The diacritic’s name in English is caron; in Czech it is háček, reflecting its “little hook” shape. In typography and digital encoding, the caron is represented in Unicode as a combining diacritic (U+030C) and in precomposed letters such as č (U+010D), š (U+0161), and ř (U+0159).

Summary: while háek may appear as a misspelling, the substantive term is háček, the diacritic mark used in several languages to alter pronunciation and written representation of related letters.