Adjective: upright
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more upright |
| Superlative | most upright |
Sample Sentences
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Fab[ell]: What meanes the tolling of this fatall chime, // O what a trembling horror ſtrikes my hart! // My ſtiffned haire ſtands vpright on my head, // As doe the briſtles of a porcupine. [1608, William Shakespeare, The merry Deuill of Edmonton, introduction, lines 1-4:]
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Supported by pillows, ſhe ſat almoſt upright. [1782, Fanny Burney, Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress, volume V, Book X, chapter X: “A Termination”, page 372]
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Another feature new to British Railways is the provision of two-position adjustable seats in the first class compartments. In this design, the seat squab can be pulled out some six inches, the seat back being attached to the seat to give a less upright sitting position. [1957 August 26, “New Multiple-Unit Stock for Hastings and Watford Services”, in Railway Magazine, page 532:]
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Upright posture evolved well before an enlarged brain in hominids. [2006, Neil A. Campbell, Biology: concepts & connections, page 404:]
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My brother didn't get angry when his son knocked over the lamp; he simply called the boy over and helped him set it upright again.
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There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 1:1:]
Adjectives inflected like upright
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English upright, uppryght, upriht, from Old English upriht (“upright; erect”), from Proto-Germanic *upprehtaz, equivalent to up- + right. Cognate with Saterland Frisian apgjucht (“upright”), West Frisian oprjocht (“upright”), Dutch oprecht (“upright”), German Low German uprecht (“upright”), German aufrecht (“upright”), Swedish upprätt (“upright”), Icelandic uppréttur (“upright”). See: Dutch Adjectives '
oprecht', German Adjectives '
aufrecht', Swedish Adjectives '
upprätt'.
Verbs referencing "upright"
Dutch Adjectives
oprecht, German Adjectives
aufrecht.