Vertical means straight up and down. A vertical line, vertical stripes, vertical drop.
The opposite is horizontal, and the two are the axes of almost every chart and building. In business, a vertical is an industry sector — the healthcare vertical — and vertical integration means owning your suppliers and distributors as well. Note vertically; and that vertical and vertigo come from the same Latin verb about turning, because the vertical was defined as the point directly overhead where the sky appears to turn.
1adjectiveverticalStraight up and down.
“The climbers faced an almost vertical wall of rock.”
vertical is an up-and-down direction.
Latin verticalis comes from vertex, the highest point or the crown of the head, from vertere, to turn. The vertical is the line to the point the heavens turn around, which is a better definition than up and down.
Proto-Indo-European
*wert-
Latin
verticālis
Middle French
vertical
English, today
vertical
Middle French vertical, from Latin verticālis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA