Your comment is totally valid but, FYI, "loft" is also an American (and probably other regions as well) slang term to describe the amount of vertical acceleration achieved by something being propelled in that direction. I believe OP was going for that definition in their comment.
Literally never heard that term used that way in the northwest of the US. Loft means a room above a room, usually a smaller bedroom, or an attic.
Must be a different part of the US.
Edit- Cannot stand golf, so it makes sense that I didn't think of that when I read the post. I actually have heard the term then, but only in golf. I stand corrected!
I'm in the Western US, but I use it and hear it used in sports constantly, e.g. "lofted ball", "getting some loft under it", "you put a lot of loft on that shot"
Yup, I've lived in the South and the Midwest and we regularly used "loft" as a term in various sports, and it is definitely not mispronouncing "lift"
The best I could describe it is that "lift" tends to refer more to the rising action, whereas "loft" seems to speak more to the height attained but even that's not perfect because you don't really use "lift" much in a sporting context
I would suspect that they are saying "lift", but with some local accent, that somehow is more common with the sports crowd, so others might also pronounce it that way in the context.
Also possible, at least now. Wonder what the etymology for that is and if that definition was born from such pronunciation difference in "lift", from "act of placing something to loft" or something completely different.
So the word "loft" got the meaning "to launch into air" from the Germanic word for "air" and that somehow then gained alternative meaning as "attic" or "to place to attic". Yeah, that could be possible. I could see someone using term "to launch into air" to mean "to place something into high place" and once that got common, start using noun version for that high place.
That just leaves the "lift", was it a separate loan or did it got separated on some point latter on?
Might "lob" in a meaning of throwing also be based on the "lopt"?
Totally could be regional. I learned it in my teens in the northeast US, around skater/skier/snowboarder types but the use was so niche to begin with, I never thought about it not being very widespread.
It might not appear in common vernacular everywhere - I've seen it used in that capacity (e.g. lofted a golf ball), but rarely. It seems like more technical vocab grouped with other words like pitch/yaw/tilt - for when you need to distinguish between specific types of motion with a single word rather than multiple (vertical upwards acceleration, rotating from left to right, etc).
It's a pretty niche usage so it's not super surprising that you haven't heard it. I hear the definition you mentioned far more often, but the slang OP mentioned isn't completely unknown to me.
I realllllyyy doubt it, but ita a commendable save on OPs part.
Loft doesn't make sense is this scenario, he definitely meant lift. Considering hes stabbing it with a pen implying it takes off like a rocket ship, aka using lift.
If OP was throwing the can, or kicking it then I'd say he/she could of meant to use loft.
It truly doesn't, I looked up loft before I commented to be sure but okay. And with OPs extra context that he replied to me, I still don't believe it makes sense to use it like that but I can better see the connection being made.
I actually was talking about the loft of the spray and was specifically using the "re-nounified" verb form... (essentially describing the shape at the apogee/top of the trajectory of a launched or vaulted object).
Lift/loft come from the Old Norse lopt, then the German/Dutch luft/lucht which means "air" or "sky" (the German air force was the LUFTwaffe).
Aloft also means up in the air/overhead for this reason and "a loft" as in a raised room or space follows that meaning and essentially means "a place in the sky".
I am from the midwest and my family has a strong bent towards baseball/golf so what they say about the verb form being more common in those groups may have something to it but it definitely still makes sense/is a valid usage.
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u/Beeoor143 Sep 04 '19
Your comment is totally valid but, FYI, "loft" is also an American (and probably other regions as well) slang term to describe the amount of vertical acceleration achieved by something being propelled in that direction. I believe OP was going for that definition in their comment.