What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Erect vs Upright - What's the difference?

erect | upright |

As adjectives the difference between erect and upright

is that erect is upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards while upright is vertical; erect.

As a verb erect

is to put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.

As an adverb upright is

in or into an upright position.

As a noun upright is

any vertical part of a structure, especially one of the goal posts in sports.

erect

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Upright; vertical or reaching broadly upwards.
  • * Gibbon
  • Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect — a column of ruins.
  • Rigid, firm; standing out perpendicularly.
  • (obsolete) Bold; confident; free from depression; undismayed.
  • * Keble
  • But who is he, by years / Bowed, but erect in heart?
  • (obsolete) Directed upward; raised; uplifted.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • His piercing eyes, erect , appear to view / Superior worlds, and look all nature through.
  • Watchful; alert.
  • * Hooker
  • vigilant and erect attention of mind
  • (heraldry) Elevated, as the tips of wings, heads of serpents, etc.
  • Antonyms

    * flaccid

    Derived terms

    * erection * semierect

    Verb

  • To put up by the fitting together of materials or parts.
  • to erect a house or a fort
  • To cause to stand up or out.
  • To raise and place in an upright or perpendicular position; to set upright; to raise.
  • to erect a pole, a flagstaff, a monument, etc.
  • To lift up; to elevate; to exalt; to magnify.
  • * Daniel
  • that didst his state above his hopes erect
  • * Dryden
  • I, who am a party, am not to erect myself into a judge.
  • To animate; to encourage; to cheer.
  • * Barrow
  • It raiseth the dropping spirit, erecting it to a loving complaisance.
  • (astrology) To cast or draw up (a figure of the heavens, horoscope etc.).
  • * 1971 , , Religion and the Decline of Magic , Folio Society 2012, p. 332:
  • 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.
  • To set up as an assertion or consequence from premises, etc.
  • * Sir Thomas Browne
  • to erect conclusions.
  • * John Locke
  • Malebranche erects this proposition.
  • To set up or establish; to found; to form; to institute.
  • * Hooker
  • to erect a new commonwealth

    Synonyms

    * build

    Anagrams

    * *

    upright

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Vertical; erect.
  • I was standing upright , waiting for my orders.
  • * 1608 , William Shakespeare, The merry Deuill of Edmonton , introduction, lines 1–4
  • Fab''[''ell'']'': ?What meanes the tolling of this fatall chime, // O what a trembling horror ?trikes my hart! // My ?tiffned haire ?tands vpright on my head, // As doe the bri?tles of a porcupine.
  • * 1782 , Fanny Burney, Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress , volume V, Book X, chapter X: “A Termination”, page 372
  • Supported by pillows, ?he ?at almo?t upright .
  • *
  • Greater in height than breadth.
  • (figuratively) Of good morals; practicing ethical values.
  • Synonyms

    *

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • in or into an upright position
  • Noun

    (en noun)
  • Any vertical part of a structure, especially one of the goal posts in sports.
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=January 5 , author=Mark Ashenden , title=Wolverhampton 1 - 0 Chelsea , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=Chelsea improved, with Salomon Kalou denied by goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey and Didier Drogba hitting the upright .}}
  • A word clued by the successive initial, middle, or final letters of the cross-lights in a double acrostic or triple acrostic.
  • (informal) An upright piano.
  • Holonyms

    * (word clued by successive letters) double acrostic, triple acrostic