lift
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "lift", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "lift" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "lift" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
lift is aEnglishverb. It means: To raise or rise. Pronounced /lɪft/. It ranks #3,006 in English word frequency. Often confused with Lt and lot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lift |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /lɪft/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,006 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lift is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɪft/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,006 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for lift, with forms such as "ilft", "lfit", and "lifft". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Lt", "lot", "lit", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 of… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is lift, spelled L-I-F-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To raise or rise.
- 2To raise or rise.
- 3To steal.
- 4To source directly without acknowledgement; to plagiarise.
- 5To arrest (a person).
- 6To remove (a ban, restriction, etc.).
- 7To alleviate, to lighten (pressure, tension, stress, etc.)
- 8To disperse, to break up.
- 9To lift weights; to weight-lift.
- 10To try to raise something; to exert the strength for raising or bearing.
- 11To elevate or improve in rank, condition, etc.; often with up.
- 12To bear; to support.
- 13To collect, as moneys due; to raise.
- 14Given morphisms f and 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; cf. lift n.etymology 1 18)
- 15Given morphisms f and 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; cf. lift n.etymology 1 18)
- 16To buy a security or other asset previously offered for sale.
- 17To take (hounds) off the existing scent and move them to another spot.
Etymology
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 (hliftus) "thief", cognate with Latin cleptus and Greek κλέπτω (kléptō)).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ilft,lfit,lifft,liftt,litf,llift
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for lift
Misspelling Variants of "lift"
Frequency rank: #3,006 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: