erect

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Being in a vertical, upright position: an erect lily stalk; an erect posture.
2. adj. Being in a stiff, rigid physiological condition.
3. adj. Archaic Wide-awake; alert.
4. v. To construct by assembling: erect a skyscraper.
5. v. To raise to a rigid or upright condition.
6. v. To fix in an upright position.
7. v. To set up; establish: erect a dynasty.
8. v. Mathematics To construct (a perpendicular, for example) from or on a given base.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To raise and set in an upright or perpendicular position; set up; raise up: as, to erect a telegraph-pole or a flagstaff.
2. To raise, as a building; build; construct: as, to erect a house or a temple; to erect a fort.
3. To set up or establish; found; form; frame: as, to erect a kingdom or commonwealth; to erect a new system or theory.
4. To raise from a lower level or condition to a higher; elevate; exalt; lift up.
5. To animate; encourage.
6. To advance or set forth; propound.
7. To draw, as a figure, upon a base; construct, as a figure: as, to erect a horoscope; to erect a circle on a given line as a semidiameter; to erect a perpendicular to a line from a given point in the line.
8. 2 and Construct, build, institute, establish, plant.
9. 1 and Elevate. See raise.
10. To take an upright position; rise.
11. Having an upright posture; standing; directed upward; raised; uplifted.
12. Specifically— In heraldry, set vertically in some unusual way: thus, a boar's head charged with the muzzle or snout uppermost, pointing to the top of the field, is said to be erect.
13. In botany, vertical throughout; not spreading or declined; upright: as, an erect stem; an erect leaf or ovule.
14. In entomology, upright: applied to hairs, spines, etc., when they are nearly but not quite at right angles to the surface or margin on which they are situated. In this sense distinguished from perpendicular or vertical.
15. Hence Upright and firm; bold.
16. Intent; alert.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.
2. adj. Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly.
3. v. transitive To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.
4. v. transitive To cause to stand up or out.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Upright, or having a vertical position; not inverted; not leaning or bent; not prone.
2. adj. Directed upward; raised; uplifted.
3. adj. Bold; confident; free from depression; undismayed.
4. adj. Watchful; alert.
5. adj. (Bot.) Standing upright, with reference to the earth's surface, or to the surface to which it is attached.
6. adj. (Her.) Elevated, as the tips of wings, heads of serpents, etc.
7. v. To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise
8. v. To raise, as a building; to build; to construct; ; to set up; to put together the component parts of, as of a machine.
9. v. To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.
10. v. To animate; to encourage; to cheer.
11. v. To set up as an assertion or consequence from premises, or the like.
12. v. To set up or establish; to found; to form; to institute.
13. v. obsolete To rise upright.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. cause to rise up
2. adj. of sexual organs; stiff and rigid
3. v. construct, build, or erect
4. adj. upright in position or posture