Other forms: lifted, lifting, lifts
To lift something is to raise it off the ground: a box, a child, the lid of a pan. Bend your knees and lift with your legs.
In British English a lift is also the machine that carries you between floors, which Americans call an elevator, and it is one of the sharpest splits between the two Englishes. A lift is a ride in someone's car as well, as in can you give me a lift to the station. Away from weight, you lift a ban, a curfew or sanctions, meaning remove them; fog lifts and cloud lifts, meaning clears; and good news lifts your spirits. In dance, a lift is the move where one partner raises the other off the floor. To lift something can also mean to steal it, which is where shoplifting comes from.
1verbliftTo raise something to a higher position.~59%
“He lifted the case onto the rack.”
2verbendTo end a rule, ban or restriction.~20%
“The government lifted the travel ban in March.”
3verbriseTo rise and clear away, or to become brighter in mood.~2%
“By ten the fog had lifted and we could see the far shore.”
4verbstealIn informal English, to steal something.~2%
“Someone had lifted his wallet on the train.”
5nounelevatorIn British English, a machine that carries people between the floors of a building.~13%
“The lift was out of order, so we took the stairs.”
synonyms: elevator
6nounfreeA free ride in someone's vehicle.~2%
“She gave me a lift home after the rehearsal.”
7nounmovementA movement in dance in which one partner raises the other off the floor.~2%
“They practised the final lift for an hour.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: raise
Lift came from Old Norse lypta, to raise in the air, left behind by Viking settlers in the north of England. Its Proto-Germanic parent luftijana is built on the old word for air and sky, the one behind German luften and Old English lyft, air. To lift was to put something up into the air, and the machine sense arrived only in 1851.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewp- — to peel, break off, damage
Proto-Germanic
*luftijaną — to raise in the air
Old Norse
lypta — to lift, air
Middle English
liften
English, today
lift
Built from
From Middle English liften, lyften, from Old Norse lypta (“to lift, air”) literally “to raise in the air”, from Proto-Germanic luftijaną (“to raise in the air”), related to luftuz (“roof, air”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European lewp- (“to peel, break off, damage”) or from a root meaning roof (see luftuz). Cognate with Danish - and Norwegian Bokmål løfte (“to lift”), Norwegian Nynorsk - and Swedish lyfta (“to lift”), German lüften (“to air, lift”), Old English lyft (“air”). See above. 1851 for the noun sense "a mechanical device for vertical transport". To steal For this sense Cleasby suggests perhaps a relation to the root of Gothic 𐌷𐌻𐌹𐍆𐍄𐌿𐍃 "thief", cognate with Latin cleptus and Greek κλέπτω). But perhaps simply from the idea of removing an item from a surface.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA