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• lever
  lever

  noun

  a rigid bar that pivots about one point and that is used to move an object at a second point by a force applied at a third.
• Lever
  Lever

  noun

  Charles James Cornelius O'Dowd, 1806–72, Irish novelist and essayist.

lever

¹ American  

[lev-er, lee-ver] / ˈlɛv ər, ˈli vər /

noun

• levers
  plural

1. 

   Mechanics. a rigid bar that pivots about one point and that is used to move an object at a second point by a force applied at a third.

2. a tool, as a pry or a crowbar, for raising, moving, or opening something by leverage.

   There's a small lever in my toolbox that'll be perfect for prying off these narrow moldings.

3. a handle or bar that is manipulated to operate, control, or adjust a machine, mechanism, etc..

   Pushing down the lever on the left will automatically open the door.

4. a means or agency of persuading or of achieving an end.

   Saying that the chairman of the board likes the plan is just a lever to get us to support it.

5. Horology. the pallet of an escapement.

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verb (used with or without object)

• levers,
  present (3rd person singular)
• levered,
  past participle,  past
• levering
  present participle

1. to move with or apply a lever.

   to lever a rock; to lever mightily and to no avail.

Lever ² American  

[lee-ver] / ˈli vər /

noun

1. Charles James Cornelius O'Dowd, 1806–72, Irish novelist and essayist.

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lever British  

/ ˈliːvə /

noun

1. a rigid bar pivoted about a fulcrum, used to transfer a force to a load and usually to provide a mechanical advantage

2. any of a number of mechanical devices employing this principle

3. a means of exerting pressure in order to accomplish something; strategic aid

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verb

1. to prise or move (an object) with a lever

lever Scientific  

/ lĕv′ər /

1. A simple machine consisting of a bar that pivots on a fixed support, or fulcrum, and is used to transmit torque. A force applied by pushing down on one end of the lever results in a force pushing up at the other end. If the fulcrum is not positioned in the middle of the lever, then the force applied to one end will not yield the same force on the other, since the torque must be the same on either side of the fulcrum. Levers, like gears, can thus be used to increase the force available from a mechanical power source.

2. See more at fulcrum See also mechanical advantage

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• relever
  verb (used with object)
• lever-like
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• levers
  plural

Participles

• levering
  present
• levered
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• lever
  simple
• levers
  simple
• have levered
  perfect
• has levered
  perfect
• am levering
  progressive
• are levering
  progressive
• is levering
  progressive
• have been levering
  perfect progressive
• has been levering
  perfect progressive

Past

• levered
  simple
• had levered
  perfect
• was levering
  progressive
• were levering
  progressive
• had been levering
  perfect progressive

Future

• will lever
  simple
• will have levered
  perfect
• will be levering
  progressive
• will have been levering
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of lever

1250–1300; Middle English levere, levour for *lever < Anglo-French; Old French levier, equivalent to lev ( er ) to lift (< Latin levāre to lighten, lift, verbal derivative of levis light) + -ier -ier ²

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Explanation

A lever is a handle, sticking out at an angle, that allows you to operate a machine or close a door. When you pull the lever of a voting booth, you both cast your ballot and open the curtain. All kinds of things — particularly machines — have levers. The word is also used to describe anything that you are able to use to move or influence someone else: think leverage. A headline in The New York Times said the government would use its contracts with private companies as a "wage lever," meaning the government would try to improve wages by giving work and money to companies that paid well and provided generous benefits. Levers get things done.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

lever Lever levers levered levering

“Memory is a lever for better AI performance. AI models generate better results with more memory, run faster with more memory,” he wrote.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 7, 2026

Pulling the force majeure lever buys Oracle some time but doesn’t reduce its financial exposure to the data center.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

Just like war itself, polygraphs should be a lever of last resort.

From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026

Unlike global greenhouse-gas emissions, black-carbon pollution is a lever that India and its neighbours can act on directly, the report argues.

From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026

There was a lever to raise the gate for the boats.

From "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas

A sale would mark the biggest portfolio shake-up for Unilever since it was created nearly a century ago through the merger of Dutch group Margarine Unie and British soap maker Lever Bros.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

Raymond Illingworth's triumphant visitors to Australia in 1970-71 had Bob Willis, Peter Lever and John Snow, and the England team that won in 1954-55 included Brian Statham and Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson.

From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2025

Lever Architecture, a firm with offices in Portland, Ore., and L.A., has helped pioneer the use of mass timber in the U.S.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2025

On the same trip, Lever also played in the very first one-day international, a hastily arranged 40-over match between England and Australia when the third Test in Melbourne was washed out.

From BBC ● Mar. 27, 2025

The museum, in London’s Leicester Square, had been founded by Sir Ashton Lever, who had driven himself bankrupt with his unrestrained collecting of natural wonders.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

Richard Hasen, professor of law at UCLA, outlines five levers the president could pull and how states, courts, and the people could respond.

From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026

Macron would also soon convene a video meeting of G7 leaders "to make progress on the various levers that can be used to address the rising fuel prices... including coordination on releasing reserves."

From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 2026

The levers to accomplish our foreign-policy goals include trade policy, through tariffs, quotas, investment policies, regulatory barriers and other instruments.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

There are Oompa-Loompas of various sizes, including Rusty Goffe, from the 1971 film, who perform Oompa-Loompa dances and sing Oompa-Loompa songs and are seen offstage pushing buttons and pulling levers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026

There was some clanking and clanging inside the shed while Mr. Fitzgibbon, looking over his shoulder, worked some levers on the side of the tractor.

From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien

“In corporate space, it’s really impacted the more levered CCC borrowers,” Payne added.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026

Still, Goldman executives prized Situational, they told clients, though the bank monitored the fund because its portfolio was so concentrated and levered, according to a person familiar with the matter.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026

“You’ve got people with a lottery mentality using margin to buy options on levered ETFs. That’s three or four layers.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026

One popular technique is levered long-short tax-loss harvesting, a strategy that uses margin and leverage to significantly boost the volume of harvestable tax losses.

From Barron's ● Jun. 13, 2026

Father gritted his jaw and levered himself up on his hands.

From "The Rock and the River" by Kekla Magoon

In that case, says Whitelaw, “maybe we should be telling young investors that they should actually be levering up, and that this is the tool to do it.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

Gerstner expressed concerns that investors are “layering up” right now, noting that “there are 14 exchange-traded funds launching on the day of the SpaceX IPO,” some of which are aimed at levering returns.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 8, 2026

If it is to play a game-changing role in levering in private investment, its £8.3bn funding over five years will have a lot of heavy lifting to do.

From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2024

By employing bioinformatics analyses and levering diverse public datasets, the team validated the robustness of HK-CREs across 50 randomly selected healthy cell types, confirming the location of HK-CREs within the genome.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 5, 2024

Unfortunately for rational Jam, the figure continued to blatantly prove her wrong, levering one arm out and reaching down to the floor for stability, the gold claws carving small strips from the hardwood.

From "Pet" by Akwaeke Emezi

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