elevator

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A platform or an enclosure raised and lowered in a vertical shaft to transport people or freight.
• noun The enclosure or platform with its operating equipment, motor, cables, and accessories.
• noun A movable control surface, usually attached to the horizontal stabilizer of an aircraft, that is used to produce motion up or down.
• noun A mechanism, often with buckets or scoops attached to a conveyor, used for hoisting materials.
• noun A granary equipped with devices for hoisting and discharging grain.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun One who or that which raises, lifts, or exalts. Specifically
• noun In anat.: A muscle which raises a part of the body, as the lip or eyelid: same as levator.
• noun Same as extensor.
• noun A surgical instrument used for raising a depressed or fractured part of the skull. Also called elevatory.
• noun In mech., a hoisting apparatus; a lift.
• noun A building containing one or more mechanical elevators, especially a warehouse for the storage of grain.
• noun In surgery: An instrument for extracting the stump of a tooth.
• noun Same as repositor.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun One who, or that which, raises or lifts up anything.
• noun A mechanical contrivance, usually an endless belt or chain with a series of scoops or buckets, for transferring grain to an upper loft for storage.
• noun A cage or platform (called an elevator car) and the hoisting machinery in a hotel, warehouse, mine, etc., for conveying persons, goods, etc., to or from different floors or levels; -- called in England a lift; the cage or platform itself.
• noun A building for elevating, storing, and discharging, grain.
• noun (Anat.) A muscle which serves to raise a part of the body, as the leg or the eye.
• noun (Surg.) An instrument for raising a depressed portion of a bone.
• noun (Aëronautics) A movable plane or group of planes used to control the altitude or fore-and-aft poise or inclination of an airship or flying machine.
• noun the boxes in which the upper pulley, belt, and lower pulley, respectively, run in a grain elevator.
• noun shoes having unusually thick soles and heels, designed to make a person appear taller than he or she actually is.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun US Permanent construction with a built-in platform that is lifted vertically.
• noun A silo used for storing wheat, corn or other grain (grain elevator)
• noun A control surface of an aircraft responsible for controling the pitching motion of the machine.
• noun Trademark for a type of shoe having an insert lift to make the wearer appear taller.
• noun A dental instrument used to pry up ("elevate") teeth in difficult extractions.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the airfoil on the tailplane of an aircraft that makes it ascend or descend
• noun lifting device consisting of a platform or cage that is raised and lowered mechanically in a vertical shaft in order to move people from one floor to another in a building