erect
adjective · verb
Simple meaning
Upright in position or posture.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ihrehktSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪˈɹɛkt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Upright in position or posture
Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.
of body parts
Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly, especially as the result of stimulation.
Watchful; alert.
verb
Cause to rise up
transitive
To cause to stand up or out.
To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise.
transitive
To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.
transitive
To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.
transitive
To animate; to encourage; to cheer.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Upright in position or posture
Used this way, erect is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- unbent , rarer, so it draws attention
- unbowed , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use erect
- “The flagpole stood erect in the center of the town square.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The act of building or putting up.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A right-angled optical prism used to turn an inverted image upright.
Upright rhizomatous perennial with bright blue flowers.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
An erect penis.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.