lifting

Pluralliftings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The action or process of raising something to a higher position.

   The lifting of the cargo onto the deck was handled by a crane.

   Repeated lifting of awkward loads contributed to her shoulder strain.

   Similarraising, hoisting

   Oppositelowering

   Note

   As a count noun it names single movements, not a general process. Eugene E. Thomas's Brotherhood of Mt. Shasta (1946) describes small workers who ignore a watcher except for "the liftings of their heads now and then." Without a plural it means the activity in general, as in heavy lifting. With a plural it breaks that activity into separate acts, so it can count nods, glances and raised hands.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of lift.

   Workers are lifting sandbags to build a barrier against the river.

   He injured his back while lifting furniture up the stairs.

   Note

   The -ing form of lift carries every meaning of the verb. That includes the slang ones (stealing, plagiarizing, arresting) and the removal of a ban or restriction. Grammar separates it from the nouns that share its spelling. As a verb it takes its object directly: lifting sanctions, lifting a paragraph. The noun needs of: the lifting of sanctions. Treat it as a verb whenever an object follows with nothing in between.

   The government is lifting sanctions next month.

   She was caught lifting whole paragraphs from an old thesis.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A form of exercise consisting of raising weights, performed to build strength or as a competitive sport.

   His lifting routine focuses mainly on the squat and the deadlift.

   Competitive lifting demands explosive power and precise technique.

   Similarweightlifting

   Note

   The short form of weightlifting, its listed synonym. Like other sports, it usually takes no article: Lou Schuler, in his foreword to Nate Green's Built for Show (2008), remembers that he "started lifting in 1970" as a skinny thirteen-year-old. The longer word is also the formal name of the competitive sport, which contests the snatch and the clean and jerk. The shorter one covers the everyday gym habit as well.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of stealing; taking property that belongs to someone else.

   A wave of lifting from local shops prompted owners to hire extra guards.

   He was charged after the lifting of jewelry from the display case.

   Similartheft, stealing, pilfering, thieving

   Note

   The noun behind the slang verb lift, "to steal." In 1836 Tait's Edinburgh Magazine described a district as the scene of "continual spreaths, liftings, reavings, and herriments," and compared it to the Border country. In the plural it counts individual raids. Because the same word also means raising and weightlifting, it reads most clearly when the thing taken is named: the lifting of jewelry.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   Plastic surgery that tightens facial tissues to improve a person's appearance.

   The surgeon recommended a lifting to address the sagging skin along her jaw.

   Recovery after a lifting can take several weeks.

   Similarfacelift

   Note

   Surgeons call the procedure a rhytidectomy, and most people call it a facelift. Lifting is a third name for the same operation. It repositions the deeper soft tissues as well as the skin to reduce sagging. Like the names of other operations it is countable: a lifting, recovery after a lifting. Context separates it from the ordinary raising of objects.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A specific operation on a measure space, studied in lifting theory, that selects a representative function from each equivalence class.

   The existence of a lifting on a complete measure space is a central result.

   Each lifting must respect the algebraic operations on the function space.

   Note

   A term from measure theory, the central object of lifting theory. It works on classes of essentially bounded measurable functions. From each class it picks one function that agrees with the class almost everywhere, and it keeps sums, scalar multiples and products intact. The word is countable: a space may carry many liftings. A standard question is whether a given complete measure space has any lifting at all.

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