lifted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of lift.

   The crane lifted the steel beam high above the construction site.

   By midmorning the fog had lifted from the valley.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs of a regular verb: she lifted the box, and the box has been lifted. Because lift works without an object as well as with one, the participle also pairs with have on its own: the fog had lifted. The passive carries the verb's looser uses too. A ban is lifted, and in slang so is a suspect, or a paragraph taken from someone else's work.

2. 2
   adjective

   Raised up and held high above its usual position.

   She admired the statue's lifted chin and proud, upright stance.

   The conductor stood with a lifted baton, ready to begin the symphony.

   Similarraised, upraised, elevated

3. 3
   adjective

   Taken unlawfully from its owner; stolen.

   Investigators traced the lifted jewelry to a local pawnshop.

   The lifted documents later turned up in a rival company's files.

   Similarstolen, pinched, nicked

   Note

   Theft pictured as picking something up and walking off with it. The adjective is built on the slang verb lift, "to steal." It suits livestock as readily as purses: John Sadler's Glencoe (2009) has the MacDonalds hiding their lifted beasts when retribution threatened. Context keeps it apart from the "raised aloft" meaning. A lifted wallet was stolen; a lifted hand was only raised.

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