To raise or to rise?

Rise or raise? What's the difference?

8/19/2017

Five hot air balloons floating approximately 50-100 meters in the air. There is a sunrise in the background with fog and trees in the foreground.

Both "to rise" and "to raise" mean to move upward. The biggest difference between "to raise" and "to rise" is that "raise" is a transitive verb while "rise" is intransitive. In other words, "raise" needs a direct object but rise does not.

Four pictures related to rise and raise: a skyhook, a skyscraper, raised hands, and an alarm clock

A. Rise
Example: Rise can be used as a command (or imperative) with no object:
The term "all rise", for instance, is used in some court systems.

B. Raise
Example: "She raised her hand to ask a question." Here, raise takes the object "her hand". If a speaker used "she raised", the statement would be incomplete.
For this reason, "she rose" makes sense to a native English speaker, but "she raised" sounds incomplete because the speaker has left out the object. What did she raise? A flag? Her arm? The dead?
There are also some other differences between these two words; for example, raise can be used as a noun to mean a pay increase: "I got a raise". Rise is not used in this way but is found in many common idioms. These are just a few:
* Get a rise out of
* On the rise
* Rise to the occasion
* Rise from the ashes

To summarize, both words mean to move upward when used as verbs. The main difference between the two is that "to raise" is transitive while "to rise" is intransitive. Partly because of this, when they are used in idioms they are usually not interchangeable.

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