Definition of "erect" []

• Being in a vertical, upright position: an erect lily stalk; an erect posture. (adjective)
• Being in a stiff, rigid physiological condition. (adjective)
• Archaic Wide-awake; alert. (adjective)
• To construct by assembling: erect a skyscraper. (verb-transitive)
• To raise to a rigid or upright condition. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The former word also means _he will establish_, or _plant in an erect position_ -- from the verb [Hebrew] _Kūn, he stood erect_."
• "She has walked and walked, in erect dignity – with a child on her back and a load on her head."
• "From the wing came a high grinding noise; through her porthole she saw the flaps strain erect, exposing their valves, and the vast tapering wing, with its indifferent little aerial at the very tip and its aluminum segments stenciled with warnings to mechanics, seem to stand on end; the intricate stiff entity of it was heeling beyond any angle of possible recovery."