elevate

What it means

1. transitiveTo raise (something) to a higher position.

   The doctor told me elevating my legs would help reduce the swelling.

   4 more examples

   The Grace or Blessynge of the table to be sayed of chyldren standynge before it, thyr handes eleuated and ioyned to gyder

   1534, William Marshall, George Joye, A Prymer in Englyshe, London: William Marshall

   She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled: […]

   c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]

   1750, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 25, 12 June, 1750, Volume 1, London: J. Payne and J. Bouquet, 1752, p. 216, We know that a few strokes of the axe will lop a cedar; but what arts of cultivation can elevate a shrub?

   Abdulla expressed his surprise by elevating his eyebrows.

   1896, Joseph Conrad, chapter V, in An Outcast of the Islands, London: T. Fisher Unwin […], →OCLC, part II, page 138

   Synonyms: lift, raise · Antonyms: drop, lower

2. transitiveTo promote (someone) to a higher rank.

   […] that’s the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority.

   1961, Joseph Heller, chapter 29, in Catch-22, New York: Dell, page 334

   4 more examples

   Hard Fate of Greatness, We so highly Elevated Are more expos’d to Censure than the little ones,

   1682, Aphra Behn, “The Roundheads or, The Good Old Cause”, in et al., London: D. Brown, act I, scene 1, page 6

   Nothing can set the regal character in a more contemptible point of view, than the various crimes that have elevated men to the supreme dignity.

   1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 24

   Much has also been made recently of the distorting effects exerted on the administration of Urban VIII by the interests of the Barberini nephews, especially of the two elevated to cardinal status.

   2014, A. D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy

   At that point, you have to elevate the account's rights, activate the feature, and then demote the account again.

   2014, Guy W. Lecky-Thompson, Inside SharePoint 2007 Administration, page 55

   Synonyms: exalt, promote, advance, aggrandize, dignify, ennoble, exalt, honor · Antonyms: demote, abase, bring down to size, cut down to size, debase, defame, degrade, demean

   1. transitivecomputingTo temporarily grant a program additional security privileges to the system to perform a privileged action (usually on the program's request).

      Did you forget that all programs that modify the registry need to be elevated?

      Synonyms: exalt, promote, advance, aggrandize, dignify, ennoble, exalt, honor · Antonyms: demote, abase, bring down to size, cut down to size, debase, defame, degrade, demean

In a sentence

The doctor told me elevating my legs would help reduce the swelling.

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰ
2. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰs
3. Proto-Italic*eks
4. Latinex
5. Latinex-
6. Proto-Indo-European*h₁lengʷʰ-
7. Proto-Indo-European*h₁léngʰus
8. Proto-Italic*breɣʷisinflu.
9. Proto-Italic*leɣʷis
10. Latinlevis
11. Latinlevō
12. Latinēlevō
13. Latinēlevātus
14. Middle Englishelevat
15. Middle Englishelevaten
16. Englishelevate

From Middle English elevaten (“to raise up, erect; to elate, inflate (e.g. with pride); (alchemy) to vaporize; (of a bone, excressence, blood vessel) to protrude”), from elevat(e) (“(in physical elevation, in rank, in altitude above the horizon) high”, also used as the past participle of elevaten) + -en (verb-forming suffix), further from Latin ēlevātus, the perfect passive participle of ēlevō (“to raise, lift up”), from ē- (“out”) + levō (“to make light, to lift”), from levis (“light”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix); see levity and lever.