a machine in a building that carries people or goods up and down between floors
Mia pressed the button and waited for the elevator to arrive.
The hotel’s glass elevator gave us a stunning view of the city skyline.
✦ From the verb raise ‘elevate’ + the agentive suffix ‘-or’; first used in 19th-century American English for machinery that lifts.
a hinged horizontal surface on an aircraft’s tail that makes the nose point up or down
The pilot adjusted the elevator to start the climb after take-off.
Ice on the elevator can reduce an aircraft’s ability to pitch correctly.
✦ Applied to aircraft parts in the early 1900s because the surfaces ‘elevate’ the nose.
a tall building or machine for lifting, storing, and loading grain, often called a grain elevator
The wheat was carried by conveyor into the town’s wooden grain elevator.
After harvest, every truck queued to unload at the cooperative’s concrete elevator.
✦ The term was extended in the late 19th century to large grain-handling structures because they ‘elevate’ grain to storage bins.
