elevated

Pluralelevateds

1. 1
   adjective

   Raised so that it stands above the surrounding ground level.

   The elevated highway carried traffic over the flooded district.

   Engineers inspected the elevated platform for signs of corrosion.

   Similarraised, overhead

   Oppositesunken

2. 2
   adjective

   Increased to a point above the normal or expected level.

   Blood tests revealed elevated cholesterol in several patients.

   Ongoing stress can keep cortisol levels elevated throughout the day.

   Similarhigh, raised, heightened

   Oppositelow, reduced

   Note

   Clinical writing prefers this word for readings above normal: elevated blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, elevated levels. It sounds more measured than high and implies comparison with a normal range. It usually describes the measurement, not the patient. Keep it apart from the stylistic sense. The elevated language of poetry is lofty, not excessive, and nothing in it has risen above a baseline.

3. 3
   adjective

   Holding a higher rank, status, or social position.

   The duke's elevated status gave him access to the royal court.

   Promotion to an elevated role brought both prestige and pressure.

   Similarhigh, exalted, lofty, senior, eminent

   Oppositelowly, low, humble

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of elevate.

   The architect elevated the floor to avoid future flooding.

   Oxygen levels were elevated artificially during the experiment.

   Note

   Every adjective on this page begins as this participle. Elevate is a transitive verb that can raise a floor, promote a person, grant a program extra privileges, or turn the mind toward worthier things. Because it always takes an object, the participle mostly appears in passives and perfects: the floor was elevated, she had been elevated to the board. Each of those uses has a settled adjective beside it, such as the computing sense.

5. 5
   adjective

   Belonging to a higher, more formal register or style of language.

   The novel's elevated prose suited its epic subject.

   Diplomatic letters are written in a deliberately elevated style.

   Similarlofty, formal, grand, exalted, literary

   Oppositeinformal, colloquial, plain

   Note

   This is a register term: it marks the formal, literary end of a scale that runs down to the colloquial. It describes language itself, so it pairs with style, diction, prose, tone and register. A sentence can be elevated without being difficult. What raises it is the choice of words and the occasion, as in ceremony, epic or diplomacy, not the complexity of its ideas.

6. 6
   nounUScountable

   A railway that runs on a raised structure above street level, especially in a city.

   Chicago's elevated loops around the central business district.

   Commuters crowded onto the elevated during the evening rush hour.

   Similarel

   Note

   An American noun clipped from elevated railway, with the adjective in the "raised" sense standing in for the whole phrase. It takes a regular plural, elevateds, and it is capitalized when it forms part of a line's name, as in the Washington Street Elevated. Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man (1934) places a damp tenement beside "the Sixth Avenue elevated." The word evokes the noise and shadow of city streets running beneath the tracks.

7. 7
   adjective

   Running with administrator-level permissions, allowing access to protected system functions.

   Installing drivers requires an elevated session on Windows.

   The script failed because it wasn't running with elevated privileges.

   Similaradministrative

   Note

   Here the word describes a process, not a person. A console, session, prompt or script is elevated while it runs with administrator rights. The usual phrases are an elevated console, running elevated, and elevated privileges. The sense comes from the verb, where a program is temporarily granted extra security privileges, usually at its own request. That makes elevation something a program has for a while, not a permanent property.

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