erect

• IPA^(key): /ɪˈɹɛkt/
• Rhymes: -ɛkt
• Hyphenation: erect

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From Middle English erect, a borrowing from Latin ērectus (“upright”), past participle of ērigō (“raise, set up”), from ē- (“out”) + regō (“to direct, keep straight, guide”).

erect (comparative more erect, superlative most erect)

1. Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.
   • Gibbon

     Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect — a column of ruins.

2. Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly.
3. (obsolete) Bold; confident; free from depression; undismayed.
   • Keble

     But who is he, by years / Bowed, but erect in heart?

4. (obsolete) Directed upward; raised; uplifted.
   • Alexander Pope

     His piercing eyes, erect, appear to view / Superior worlds, and look all nature through.

5. Watchful; alert.
   • Hooker

     vigilant and erect attention of mind

6. (heraldry) Elevated, as the tips of wings, heads of serpents, etc.

• (rigid; standing out perpendicularly): flaccid

• erectable
• semierect

• erectile
• erection
• erigible

From Middle English erecten, from the adjective (see above).

erect (third-person singular simple present erects, present participle erecting, simple past and past participle erected)

1. (transitive) To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.

   to erect a house or a fort

2. (transitive) To cause to stand up or out.
3. To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise.

   to erect a pole, a flagstaff, a monument, etc.

4. To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.
   • Daniel

     that didst his state above his hopes erect

   • Dryden

     I, who am a party, am not to erect myself into a judge.

5. To animate; to encourage; to cheer.
   • Barrow

     It raiseth the dropping spirit, erecting it to a loving complaisance.

6. (astrology) To cast or draw up (a figure of the heavens, horoscope etc.).
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p. 332:

     In 1581 Parliament made it a statutory felony to erect figures, cast nativities, or calculate by prophecy how long the Queen would live or who would succeed her.

7. To set up as an assertion or consequence from premises, etc.
   • Sir Thomas Browne

     to erect conclusions.

   • John Locke

     Malebranche erects this proposition.

8. To set up or establish; to found; to form; to institute.
   • Hooker

     to erect a new commonwealth

   • 1812, Arthur Collins & Sir Egerton Brydges, Peerage of England, F.C. and J. Rivington et al, page 330:

     In 1686, he was appointed one of the Commissioners in the new ecclesiastical commission erected by King James, and was proud of that honour.

• build

• re-erect, reerect

• -crete, Crete, recte, terce