Definition of "lift"

lift¹

/lɪft/

verb
third-person singular simple present lifts, present participle lifting, simple past lifted or (rare, regional, obsolete) lift, past participle lifted or (rare, regional, obsolete) lift or (obsolete) yleft
1. (transitive, intransitive) To raise or rise.
  Quotations
  Liftand (lifting) thy hands and thy eyen to Heaven.
  c. 1490, Of Penance and Confession be master Jhon Yrlandː
  Their walk had continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed a creek by a wooden bridge and came to a row of mean houses standing flush with the street. At the door of one, an old black woman had stooped to lift a large basket, piled high with laundered clothes.
  1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […]
  Once it [a snowdrop variety] became established, some bulbs were lifted and passed on to be chipped (i.e. cut into small pieces and grown on).
  2015 February 7, Val Bourne, “The quiet man of the world of snowdrops”, in The Daily Telegraph (London), page G8
2. (transitive, slang) To steal.
  Quotations
  Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride.
  1919, Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West
  “Wilbert Cream is a ... what's the word?” I referred to the letter. “A kleptomaniac […] Does any thought occur to you?” “It most certainly does. I am thinking of your uncle's collection of old silver.” “Me, too.” “It presents a grave temptation to the unhappy young man.” “I don't know that I'd call him unhappy. He probably thoroughly enjoys lifting the stuff.”
  1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins
3. (transitive, slang) To source directly without acknowledgement; to plagiarise.
  Quotations
  Based on a similarity across a range of Anglo-Indian entries in these three dictionaries, it appears that (along with other lexis) Barrère and Leland (1898) copied this entry from Hotten (1864), who had in turn lifted it directly from Stocqueler (1848).
  2018, James Lambert, “Anglo-Indian slang in dictionaries on historical principles”, in World Englishes, volume 37, page 258
4. (transitive, slang) To arrest (a person).
  Quotations
  Maybe the police lifted him and he's in Castlereagh [Interrogation Centre] because he'd been lifted three or four times previously and took to Castlereagh. They used to come in and raid the house and take him away.
  2000, Marie Smyth, Marie-Therese Fay, Personal Accounts From Northern Ireland's Troubles
5. (transitive) To remove (a ban, restriction, etc.).
6. (transitive) To alleviate, to lighten (pressure, tension, stress, etc.)
  Quotations
  The Gunners boss has been heavily criticised for his side's poor start to the Premier League season but this result helps lift the pressure.
  2011 September 24, David Ornstein, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC Sport‎
7. (transitive) to cause to move upwards.
  Quotations
  Graham secured victory with five minutes left, coolly lifting the ball over Asmir Begovic.
  2011 October 2, Aled Williams, “Swansea 2 - 0 Stoke”, in BBC Sport Wales‎
8. (informal, intransitive) To lift weights; to weight-lift.
9. To try to raise something; to exert the strength for raising or bearing.
  Quotations
  strained by lifting at a weight too heavy
  a. 1705, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke: […], London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], published 1706
10. To elevate or improve in rank, condition, etc.; often with up.
  Quotations
  The Roman virtues lift up mortal man.
  1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, Act I, scene i, page 1
  being lifted up with pride
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1 Timothy 3:6
11. (obsolete) To bear; to support.
  Quotations
  Th' earth him underneath Did grone, as feeble so great load to lift.
  1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
12. To collect, as moneys due; to raise.
13. (programming) To transform (a function) into a corresponding function in a different context.
  Quotations
  Finally, we can lift a partial function into a regular (total) function that returns an Option or a Some(value) when the partial function is defined for the input argument or None when it isn't.
  2021, Dean Wampler, chapter 2, in Programming Scala, 3rd edition, O'Reilly
14. (finance) To buy a security or other asset previously offered for sale.
15. (hunting, transitive) To take (hounds) off the existing scent and move them to another spot.
  Quotations
  I lifted the hounds (hoping to catch the leading ones there) to the far side of Hallaton Thorns.
  1885, Lina Chaworth Musters, Book of Hunting Songs and Sport, page 144
16. (category theory, transitive) Given morphisms f {\displaystyle f} and g {\displaystyle g} with the same target: To produce a morphism which the given morphism factors through (i.e. a morphism h such that f = g ∘ h ; c.f. lift n.18)
noun
countable and uncountable, plural lifts
1. An act of lifting or raising.
2. The act of transporting someone in a vehicle; a ride; a trip.
  Quotations
  Accordingly, in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from Summerlee, I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with the other in his motor-car, for he had offered me a lift to Victoria.
  1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton
3. (UK, Australia, New Zealand) Mechanical device for vertically transporting goods or people between floors in a building.
4. An upward force, such as the force that keeps aircraft aloft.
5. (measurement) The difference in elevation between the upper pool and lower pool of a waterway, separated by lock.
6. (historical slang) A thief.
  Quotations
  The lift came into the shop dressed like a country gentleman, but was careful not to have a cloak about him, so that the tradesman could see he had no opportunity to conceal any goods about his person.
  1977, Gãmini Salgãdo, The Elizabethan Underworld, Folio Society, published 2006, page 32
7. (dance) The lifting of a dance partner into the air.
8. Permanent construction with a built-in platform that is lifted vertically.
9. (figurative) An improvement in mood.
  Quotations
  Just to think he had both a mistress and a wife gave him a lift. He needed a lift, for although he'd had promotion, his wasn't an exciting job.
  2010, Anne Baker, With a Little Luck
  The dismissal of a player who left Arsenal for Manchester City before joining Tottenham gave the home players and fans a noticeable lift.
  2012 November 17, “Arsenal 5-2 Tottenham”, in BBC Sport‎
10. The amount or weight to be lifted.
11. The space or distance through which anything is lifted.
12. A rise; a degree of elevation.
13. A liftgate.
14. (nautical) A rope leading from the masthead to the extremity of a yard below, and used for raising or supporting the end of the yard.
15. (engineering) One of the steps of a cone pulley.
16. (shoemaking) A layer of leather in the heel of a shoe.
17. (horology) That portion of the vibration of a balance during which the impulse is given.
  Quotations
  some measure the total lift and others only the lift on one side , a quantity which is not exactly half of the total lift
  1887, Claudius Saunier, A Treatise on Modern Horology in Theory and Practice
18. (category theory) A morphism which some given morphism factors through; i.e. given a pair of morphisms f : X → Y and g : Z → Y , a morphism h such that f = g ∘ h . (In this case h {\displaystyle h} is said to be a lift of f {\displaystyle f} via Z {\displaystyle Z} or via g {\displaystyle g} ).
  Quotations
  For a covering space p : X ~ → X {\displaystyle p:{\tilde {X}}\to X} a path γ {\displaystyle \gamma } [i.e. a continuous map [ 0 , 1 ] → X {\displaystyle [0,1]\to X} ] in X {\displaystyle X} has a unique lift γ ~ {\displaystyle {\tilde {\gamma }}} starting at a given point of p − 1 ( γ ( 0 ) ) {\displaystyle p^{-1}(\gamma (0))}
  2001, Allen Hatcher, Algebraic Topology, page 69

lift²

/lɪft/

noun
usually uncountable, plural lifts
1. (UK dialectal, chiefly Scotland) Air.
2. (UK dialectal, chiefly Scotland) The sky; the heavens; firmament; atmosphere.
  Quotations
  No, no, Leddy! the sun maun be up in the lift whan I venture to her den.
  1836, Joanna Baillie, Witchcraft, act 1, page 13

Definition of "lift"

lift1

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lift2

noun

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lift¹

lift²