Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Being in a vertical, upright position.
  • adjective Being in a stiff, rigid physiological condition.
  • transitive verb To construct by assembling.
  • transitive verb To raise to a rigid or upright condition.
  • transitive verb To fix in an upright position.
  • transitive verb To set up; establish.
  • transitive verb Mathematics To construct (a perpendicular, for example) from or on a given base.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To raise and set in an upright or perpendicular position; set up; raise up: as, to erect a telegraph-pole or a flagstaff.
  • To raise, as a building; build; construct: as, to erect a house or a temple; to erect a fort.
  • To set up or establish; found; form; frame: as, to erect a kingdom or commonwealth; to erect a new system or theory.
  • To raise from a lower level or condition to a higher; elevate; exalt; lift up.
  • To animate; encourage.
  • To advance or set forth; propound.
  • 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.
  • 2 and Construct, build, institute, establish, plant.
  • 1 and Elevate. See raise.
  • To take an upright position; rise.
  • Having an upright posture; standing; directed upward; raised; uplifted.
  • 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.
  • In botany, vertical throughout; not spreading or declined; upright: as, an erect stem; an erect leaf or ovule.
  • 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.
  • Hence Upright and firm; bold.
  • Intent; alert.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb obsolete To rise upright.
  • adjective Upright, or having a vertical position; not inverted; not leaning or bent; not prone.
  • adjective Directed upward; raised; uplifted.
  • adjective Bold; confident; free from depression; undismayed.
  • adjective Watchful; alert.
  • adjective (Bot.) Standing upright, with reference to the earth's surface, or to the surface to which it is attached.
  • adjective (Her.) Elevated, as the tips of wings, heads of serpents, etc.
  • transitive verb To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise
  • transitive verb To raise, as a building; to build; to construct; ; to set up; to put together the component parts of, as of a machine.
  • transitive verb To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.
  • transitive verb To animate; to encourage; to cheer.
  • transitive verb To set up as an assertion or consequence from premises, or the like.
  • transitive verb To set up or establish; to found; to form; to institute.
  • transitive verb (Mach.) a place where large machines, as engines, are put together and adjusted.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.
  • adjective Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly.
  • verb transitive To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.
  • verb transitive To cause to stand up or out.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cause to rise up
  • adjective of sexual organs; stiff and rigid
  • verb construct, build, or erect
  • adjective upright in position or posture

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Latin ērēctus, past participle of ērigere, to set up : ē-, ex-, ex- + regere, to guide; see reg- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin erectus upright, past participle of erigere raise or set up from e- up + regere to direct, keep straight, guide.

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Examples

  • The former word also means _he will establish_, or _plant in an erect position_ -- from the verb [Hebrew] _Kūn, he stood erect_.

    Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Albert Pike 1850

  • She has walked and walked, in erect dignity – with a child on her back and a load on her head.

    The Nobel Peace Prize 2004 2004

  • From the wing came a high grinding noise; through her porthole she saw the flaps strain erect, exposing their valves, and the vast tapering wing, with its indifferent little aerial at the very tip and its aluminum segments stenciled with warnings to mechanics, seem to stand on end; the intricate stiff entity of it was heeling beyond any angle of possible recovery.

    Varieties of Religious Experience 2002

  • From the wing came a high grinding noise; through her porthole she saw the flaps strain erect, exposing their valves, and the vast tapering wing, with its indifferent little aerial at the very tip and its aluminum segments stenciled with warnings to mechanics, seem to stand on end; the intricate stiff entity of it was heeling beyond any angle of possible recovery.

    Varieties of Religious Experience 2002

  • When the news, if you can call an erect penis news, exploded on to the Twittersphere, and then the blogosphere, and then into what another prominent American politician calls the "lamestream" media, Weiner seemed a bit confused.

    Christina Patterson: Sex, Drugs, Twitter -- and Anthony Weiner Christina Patterson 2011

  • In the fall it dries out but the stalks remain erect.

    SVGL Needs You! SVGL 2009

  • When the news, if you can call an erect penis news, exploded on to the Twittersphere, and then the blogosphere, and then into what another prominent American politician calls the "lamestream" media, Weiner seemed a bit confused.

    Christina Patterson: Sex, Drugs, Twitter -- and Anthony Weiner Christina Patterson 2011

  • When the news, if you can call an erect penis news, exploded on to the Twittersphere, and then the blogosphere, and then into what another prominent American politician calls the "lamestream" media, Weiner seemed a bit confused.

    Christina Patterson: Sex, Drugs, Twitter -- and Anthony Weiner Christina Patterson 2011

  • If we are to assume that each little yellow member is 4.5 inches when erect, that is still 12,000,000feet of fallow penises, or 2,273 miles of unused little dinks.

    32 million extra males. Ann Althouse 2009

  • Fate was tempting me and it was only a testament to my iron will that I did not succumb...and to the fact that in my experience, men who start out a bit on the smaller side often grow to be bigger than average once erect, which is what's important, after all.

    Members Only Jay 2008

Comments

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  • to stand, constant, stable

    July 22, 2009