lift
/lɪft/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.50 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The fog eventually lifted, leaving the streets clear."
- "You never lift a finger to help me!"
- "c. 1490, Of Penance and Confession be master Jhon Yrlandː Liftand (lifting) thy hands and thy eyen to Heaven."
- "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."
- "Instantly a great flutter of butterflies of all sizes and colors lifted in spangled clouds about them."
- "A long, late-night tracking shot from one end of the Neon Boot bar to another actually tracks along the surface of the bar itself—and when there is a drunk passed out on the bar, the camera simply lifts up and flies over him, then continues on its route."
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)). But perhaps simply from the idea of removing an item from a surface.