loft

American  

[lawft, loft] / lɔft, lɒft /

noun

• lofts
  plural

1. a room, storage area, or the like within a sloping roof; attic; garret.

2. a gallery or upper level in a church, hall, etc., designed for a special purpose.

   a choir loft.

3. a hayloft.

4. an upper story of a business building, warehouse, or factory, typically consisting of open, unpartitioned floor area.

5. such an upper story converted or adapted to any of various uses, as quarters for living, studios for artists or dancers, exhibition galleries, or theater space.

6. Also called loft bed. a balcony or platform built over a living area and used especially for sleeping.

7. Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S. an attic.

8. Golf.

   1. the slope of the face of the head of a club backward from the vertical, tending to drive the ball upward.

   2. the act of lofting.

   3. a lofting stroke.

9. the resiliency of fabric or yarn, especially wool.

10. the thickness of a fabric or of insulation used in a garment, as a down-filled jacket.

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verb (used with object)

• lofts,
  present (3rd person singular)
• lofted,
  past participle,  past
• lofting
  present participle

1. to hit or throw aloft.

   He lofted a fly ball into center field.

2. Golf.

   1. to slant the face of (a club).

   2. to hit (a golf ball) into the air or over an obstacle.

   3. to clear (an obstacle) in this manner.

3. to store in a loft.

4. Shipbuilding. to form or describe (the lines of a hull) at full size, as in a mold loft; lay off.

5. Archaic. to provide (a house, barn, etc.) with a loft.

verb (used without object)

• lofts,
  present (3rd person singular)
• lofted,
  past participle,  past
• lofting
  present participle

1. to hit or throw something aloft, especially a ball.

2. to go high into the air when hit, as a ball.

loft British  

/ lɒft /

noun

1. the space inside a roof

2. a gallery, esp one for the choir in a church

3. a room over a stable used to store hay

4. an upper storey of a warehouse or factory, esp when converted into living space

5. a raised house or coop in which pigeons are kept

6. sport

   1. (in golf) the angle from the vertical made by the club face to give elevation to a ball

   2. elevation imparted to a ball

   3. a lofting stroke or shot

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verb

1. sport to strike or kick (a ball) high in the air

2. to store or place in a loft

3. to lay out a full-scale working drawing of (the lines of a vessel's hull)

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• underloft
  noun
• loftless
  adjective
• well-lofted
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• lofts
  plural

Participles

• lofting
  present
• lofted
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• loft
  simple
• lofts
  simple
• have lofted
  perfect
• has lofted
  perfect
• am lofting
  progressive
• are lofting
  progressive
• is lofting
  progressive
• have been lofting
  perfect progressive
• has been lofting
  perfect progressive

Past

• lofted
  simple
• had lofted
  perfect
• was lofting
  progressive
• were lofting
  progressive
• had been lofting
  perfect progressive

Future

• will loft
  simple
• will have lofted
  perfect
• will be lofting
  progressive
• will have been lofting
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of loft

before 1000; Middle English lofte (noun), late Old English loft < Old Norse lopt upper chamber or region, the air, sky. See lift

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Explanation

When you loft something, you throw it high into the air, the way a baseball player might loft a ball from the outfield all the way to first base. Any way you propel an object — whether you throw, kick, or slingshot it — if it launches up and across a distance, you loft it. Another kind of loft is the large, open space above a warehouse or shop in which people live or work. Artists are particularly well known for having apartments or studios in lofts. This is closest to the word's original meaning, "an upper chamber," from the Old English loft, which means "the sky."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

loft lofts lofted lofting

She would use her three-bedroom loft whenever she was in the Big Apple for work, according to its listing agents, Scott Francis and Ashley Brooke with Serhant.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2026

“It was obvious that the record was going to be about that,” said Dailor, sitting with the others in an upstairs loft at the Hollywood offices of the band’s label, Loma Vista.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026

His incredible work went largely unreported for nearly 50 years - until his wife found a scrapbook in their loft, which contained names of the 669 children, who were mostly Jewish, that he had rescued.

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026

Comprising most of the museum’s 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, it is treated as one great loft, sliced into smaller galleries by nonstructural partitions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026

Climbing down from the loft, we all went and looked at the three big stinking rats, floating in the barrel amongst the ears of corn that had been the bait.

From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns

Then go back to looking at those beachfront condos with beautiful views and trendy historic lofts, all the while dreaming about your future adventures.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026

Rec centers were revamped with climbing walls and lazy rivers; dorms gave way to apartment lofts with expansive lounges; campus coffee bars were established with national brands.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

The urban revival in downtown L.A. produced 12,000 new homes but most were high-end apartments or lofts, and SRO hotel units continued to decline.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2025

But fear not, Apex isn’t just hanging out in one of Griffin’s lofts, overseeing his nightly buffet of caviar and gold-leafed Pringles.

From Slate ● Dec. 13, 2024

It was one of those lofts you see in movies and at parties, the one cavernous nearly-empty room of windows and hardwood flooring, some exposed brick, steam pipes.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee

And on third down, Lonergan lofted a pass to star receiver KJ Duff, who caught it over cornerback Jontez Williams and still managed to get a foot down for an 11-yard score.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

From October 2024 through January 2025, as bitcoin lofted past $100,000, investors poured an astounding $20.7 billion into this group of ETFs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

The Briton fended off three break points at 4-3, but it only delayed the inevitable and Zverev lofted a ball into the sky as he secured the victory.

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026

Their first six wickets were all lofted catches, with Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma and Washington Sundar also looping chances to waiting fielders as India continued to struggle against the short ball.

From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026

Antoine faked a run to the right and lofted a pass into the left corner of the end zone that some mud-covered Seagull receiver caught for the touchdown.

From "Tangerine" by Edward Bloor

Touted for years by Musk as the key to taking humans to Mars, SpaceX is now looking to show that Starship can work, including by lofting the company’s own satellites into orbit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 4, 2026

Oviedo gave away a poor second goal after 57 minutes, with Raphinha running on to an undercooked back-pass from David Costas and lofting the ball over Oviedo goalkeeper Aaron Escandell.

From Barron's ● Jan. 25, 2026

What about Teoscar Hernández lofting a three-run homer over the wall in right-center field to silence the notoriously hostile crowd at Citizens Bank Park?

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2025

Powerful monsoon winds, strengthened by a warming climate, are lofting unexpectedly large quantities of ozone-depleting substances high into the atmosphere over East Asia, new research shows.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 23, 2024

Some of the more common ones are called "driver," "brassie," "cleek," "iron," "mashie," "niblick," "putter," and "lofting iron."

From Outdoor Sports and Games by Claude H. Miller

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