Have you come across situations when some words confuse you in regard to their form, meaning or spelling? This happens with certain similar sounding verb pairs such as “rise” and “raise”. While both mean ‘to move upwards’, both are not interchangeable. Let’s see why.
‘Rise’ means to get up from a sitting, lying or kneeling posture and it is an intransitive verb that does not need an object.
On the other hand, ‘raise’ means ‘to cause to rise’ and is a transitive verb as it needs an object to cause the motion.
All for an ‘a’
Example: The sun rises every morning. (‘The sun’ is the subject and ‘rises’ is the intransitive verb; it does not require an object to do the motion.)
Raghu raised his arm before anybody else could. (‘Raghu’ is the subject, ‘raised’ is the transitive verb and ‘arms’ is the object; ; ‘raised’ needed an object to cause the motion)
‘Raise’ is a regular verb and its present, past and past participle forms are raise,raised and raises.
‘Rise’ is an irregular verb and its present, past and past participle forms are rise , rose and risen
Some uses of ‘rise’:
To get up from a lying, sitting or kneeling position: Please rise for the Prayer.
To move upward without assistance: It’s a good habit to rise with the sun.
Some uses of ‘raise’:
To elevate: The boy raised the heavy box without any difficulty.
To lift something: The students were asked to raise their arms when in
doubt.
To set upright by building: The citizens raised the national flag to commemorate the event.
