Definitions

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

  • noun A large, usually unpartitioned floor over a factory, warehouse, or other commercial or industrial space.
  • noun Such a floor converted into an apartment or artist's studio.
  • noun An open space under a roof; an attic or garret.
  • noun A gallery or balcony, as in a church.
  • noun A hayloft.
  • noun The backward slant of the face of a golf club head, designed to drive the ball up off the ground.
  • noun A golf stroke that drives the ball in a high arc.
  • noun The upward course of a ball driven in a high arc.
  • noun The thickness of a fabric or yarn.
  • noun The thickness of an item, such as a down comforter, that is filled with compressible insulating material.
  • intransitive verb To put, store, or keep in a loft.
  • intransitive verb To propel in a high arc.
  • intransitive verb Nautical To lay out a full-size drawing of (the parts of a ship's hull, for example).
  • intransitive verb To propel something, especially a ball, in a high arc.
  • intransitive verb To rise high into the air.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In golf: The act of lofting.
  • noun The stroke so made.
  • noun The degree of slope from the vertical of the face of a club.
  • To furnish with a loft.
  • noun A pigeon-house.
  • noun The flock of pigeons kept in it.
  • noun The air; the sky: same as lift. See on loft (below), aloft.
  • noun A room or space between a ceiling or flooring and the roof immediately above it; the space below and between the rafters; a garret.
  • noun A floor or room above another or others; an upper story; especially, in the United States, one of the upper stories of a warehouse or other mercantile building, or of a factory.
  • noun A gallery or an elevated apartment within a larger apartment, as in a church, hall, barn, etc.: as, an organ-loft; a hay-loft.
  • To lift; in golf, to play (the ball) into the air in making a stroke.

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

  • adjective R. & Obs. Lofty; proud.
  • noun That which is lifted up; an elevation.
  • noun The room or space under a roof and above the ceiling of the uppermost story.
  • noun A gallery or raised apartment in a church, hall, etc..
  • noun A floor or room placed above another; a story.
  • noun (Golf) Pitch or slope of the face of a club (tending to drive the ball upward).
  • noun [Obs.] aloft; on high. Cf. Onloft.
  • transitive verb To make or furnish with a loft; to cause to have loft.
  • verb (Golf) To raise aloft; to send into the air

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

  • noun obsolete air, the air; the sky, the heavens.
  • noun An attic or similar space (often used for storage) in the roof of a house or other building.
  • noun textiles The thickness of a soft object when not under pressure.
  • verb To propel high into the air.
  • verb bowling To throw the ball erroneously through the air instead of releasing it on the lane's surface.
  • adjective obsolete, rare lofty; proud; haughty

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

  • verb lay out a full-scale working drawing of the lines of a vessel's hull
  • noun (golf) the backward slant on the head of some golf clubs that is designed to drive the ball high in the air
  • verb kick or strike high in the air
  • noun floor consisting of open space at the top of a house just below roof; often used for storage
  • verb propel through the air
  • noun floor consisting of a large unpartitioned space over a factory or warehouse or other commercial space

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, sky, upstairs room, from Old English, air, from Old Norse lopt, upstairs room, sky, air.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English lofte ("air, sky, upper region, loft"), from Old English loft, of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse lopt ("upper chamber, attic, region of sky, air"), from Proto-Germanic *luftuz (“air, sky”). Akin to Old High German luft "air" (German Luft), Old English lyft ("air"). More at lift, aloft.

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Examples

  • Located in the Spears Building on West 22nd Street, the loft is approximately 3,600 sq. feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms.

    Dixie Chick Natalie Maines Buys New West Chelsea Loft The Huffington Post News Team 2010

  • The room has a loft that leads to the bedrooms on the new second floor, and underneath the loft is the family homeschool area.

    Hundred-and-Thirteen-Acre Wood: Great Room regina doman 2007

  • The room has a loft that leads to the bedrooms on the new second floor, and underneath the loft is the family homeschool area.

    Archive 2007-06-01 regina doman 2007

  • The first location was down near Wall Street, in what they call a loft, and we were divided in sections that did different parts of the process.

    Oral History Interview with Lucy Somerville Howorth, June 20, 22, and 23, 1975. Interview G-0028. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) 1975

  • In the '70s, Mr. Rivers ran Studio Rivbea, a downtown Manhattan performance space that hosted some of the most vibrant new jazz of the decade; it was a cornerstone of what was known as the loft jazz scene.

    Big-Band Sounds—Of the 1970s Martin Johnson 2011

  • The sinuosity of the loft is taken back by the upside-down cones that, I suspended as stalactites, they channel downward the light

    Coni Rovesci by Duilio Damilano 2008

  • By some definitions, every new loft is indeed a fake — whether constructed from the ground up, rehabbed as a calculated real-estate development rather than a spontaneous personal reuse of found space, or occupied by investment bankers instead of artists.

    Lofty Ambitions 2007

  • A rough industrial space with concrete floors and few interior walls — a common real-estate definition of an “authentic loft” — may seem less authentic than a newly built loft if the old building has small windows and low ceilings while the new loft is bright and spacious.

    Lofty Ambitions 2007

  • By some definitions, every new loft is indeed a fake — whether constructed from the ground up, rehabbed as a calculated real-estate development rather than a spontaneous personal reuse of found space, or occupied by investment bankers instead of artists.

    Lofty Ambitions 2007

  • From carefully selected materials like ipe wood and Cor-Ten steel green systems like radiant heating and fluorescent lighting, this modern loft is both thoughtful and homey.

    2007 October | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World 2007

Comments

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  • No WordNet definition on this either... Lift has one, so it's not some weird 'l*ft' glitch.

    December 10, 2008

  • It’s an old, familiar idea: Truth is beauty. Beauty is truth. They go together, inextricable, like friendship and laughter, or road work and traffic. Gazing at the universe will always satisfy your aesthetic itch—and if not, then you probably suck at gazing. In her new book Lost in Math, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder lofts a very skeptical eyebrow at this orthodoxy.

    https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2018/11/07/when-the-math-is-pretty-but-the-truth-aint/

    November 10, 2018