Skip to content
Allin

erect

adjectiveverbattested in dialogue

  • //ɪˈɹɛkt//

Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.

adjective

  1. 1

    Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.

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

  2. 2

    Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly, especially as the result of stimulation.

    The penis should be fully erect before commencing copulation.

    erect nipples

  3. 3

    Having an erect penis or clitoris.

    OK, baby, I'm erect now. Let's get it on!

  4. 4

    obsoleteBold; confident; free from depression; undismayed.

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

  5. 5

    obsoleteDirected upward; raised; uplifted.

    His piercing Eyes, erect, appear to vievv / Superior VVorlds, and look all Nature thro'.

  6. 6

    Watchful; alert.

    vigilant and erect attention of mind

  7. 7

    Elevated, as the tips of wings, heads of serpents, etc.

Etymology

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”).

verb

  1. 1

    To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.

    to erect a house or a fort

  2. 2

    To cause to stand up or out.

  3. 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. 4

    To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise. To spin up and align to vertical.

    As soon as electrical power was restored, the attitude indicators' gyros would have begun to erect.

  5. 5

    To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.

    that didst his state above his hopes erect

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

  6. 6

    To animate; to encourage; to cheer.

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

  7. 7

    To cast or draw up (a figure of the heavens, horoscope etc.).

    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.

  8. 8

    To enter a state of physiological erection.

    On the 17th of July, the patient returned to the country, perfectly healed: the penis erected and he was capable of coition.

    On an adequate stimulus the penis erected, the testes were drawn up, and the dartos muscle slowly contracted.

    His black dick erected with a long bend.

    When the penis erects, blood pours into what erectile tissue there is and enlarges the penis somewhat, but by making it turgid, the S-shaped bend is straightened out and the penis extends.

  9. 9

    To set up as an assertion or consequence from premises, etc.

    from fallacious foundations, and misapprehended mediums, erecting conclusions no way inferrible from their premises

    Malebranche erects this proposition.

  10. 10

    To set up or establish; to found; to form; to institute.

    to erect a new commonwealth

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

Etymology

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

Forms

comparative
more erect
superlative
most erect
past tense
erected
past participle
erected
present participle
erecting
third person singular
erects
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).