erection

Noun

erection (countable and uncountable, plural erections)

1. (uncountable) The act of building or putting up or together of something.

   Synonyms:

   building, construction

2. (countable) Anything erected or built.
   • The Empire State Building was once the world's tallest erection.
   • If any serious number of deck erections have been left unfaired, these percentages will be too low.1948, George Stephen Baker, Ship Design, Resistance and Screw Propulsion, page 194

   Synonyms:

   building, construction

3. Formal approval and official establishment of an institution such as a society or a monastery by higher church authorities.
   • There is some obscurity attaching to the only other one of those alleged erections of parishes, the case of Foot Dee, near Aberdeen.1842, Patrick Robertson, Stewarton Case: Report of the Pleadings […] , page 43
   • If the erection of a society is made with pontifical authority, then the society is one of pontifical legal status from its inception.1949, Bernard Joseph Ristuccia, Quasi-religious Societies: A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary, page 65
4. (uncountable) The physiological process by which erectile tissue, such as a penis or clitoris, becomes erect by being engorged with blood.
   • I think that the case also demonstrates some singular aspects of the penis as a narrator of tales, specifically the way in which the erection of a penis falls outside a man's conscious control and therefore threatens a carefully constructed master legal narrative in which bodily self-control...1997, Alan Hyde, Bodies of Law, Princeton University Press, published 1997, →ISBN, page 175
   • There are men who say they cannot bear to show themselves naked before women unless in a state of erection; and indeed through erection the flesh becomes activity, potency, […]2006, Lori Marso, Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women, Routledge (2006), unnumbered pages (quoting Simone Beauvoir)
5. (uncountable) The state or quality of being erect from engorgement with blood.
   • […] but our experienc'd matron very soon, by chafing it with her hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I had before seen it up to.1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC
   • Older men typically require longer periods of time to achieve erection and reach orgasm.2008, Robert Crooks, Karla Baur, Our Sexuality, Thomson Wadsworth, published 2008, →ISBN, page 163
6. (countable) A penis or clitoris that is erect.
   • He placed his newspaper on his lap to hide his erection.
   • Nothing is more short-lived than the erection; like the crocus of spring, it is there for a moment, and then it is gone; one moment the penis is small, soft, and insignificant, and then in the next it is hard, rigid, and three and four times its previous size.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 128

   Synonyms:

   babymaker, boner, bone, bonk-on, bonny, chubby, fatty, hard-on, lob-on, lumber