lever

1. 1.

   to move or force, especially in an effort to get something open

   “The burglar jimmied the lock”

   “Raccoons managed to pry the lid off the garbage pail”

   Synonymsprypriseprizejimmy

   Broaderopen

Other forms of lever

plural

levers·

past tense

leverred·

present participle

leverring·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about lever

What does lever mean?

lever means "a rigid bar pivoted about a fulcrum". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in lever?

lever has 2 syllables: lev-er. The stress falls on "lev". In IPA it is /ˈlɛvɚ/.

What is another word for lever?

Close synonyms include lever tumbler, pry, prise, prize, jimmy. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is lever a common word?

lever is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.