The Heimlich Maneuver (named after the doctor who invented it), is a way to dislodge food from someone's throat when they are choking to death. You stand behind them, wrap your arms around their abdomen, make a fist, and thrust upward several times. This should cause the food or whatever is blocking the throat to pop out. I'm a nurse, but I have never heard the maneuver used as a verb. We say"performed the Heimlich Maneuver." However, unless this is some kind of slang that I don't know about, there should be very few times when you would need to use the word.

You mean the Heimlich manoeuvre? It is also described as 'abdominal thrusts' - so you could say: "You performed abdominal thrusts on someone." But I'm not sure that the average person in the street will understand what you mean. The truth is that it is much more commonly known as the Heimlich manoevre. If you say that people will understand what you mean. I wouldn't worry too much about the precise pronunciation, because it's an anglicised form of a name of German origin most of say "Heim' to rhyme with 'time' and we can't pronounce the 'ich' part in a German way, and so we say something that sounds like "Himelick". In fact I'm not even sure how Dr. Heimlich himself would say it. Not sure about the tense here...is he still alive?

I wonder if it isn't a German word.