These verbs all indicate the assembling and fitting together of materials into a structure. Build , the most general and least formal word, has the widest range of uses, from the most concrete and specific to the highly figurative and abstract.

• Carpenters build houses and birds build nests; Cavemen built fires at the mouths of their caves; The company director hoped to build a business empire; Nations built their hopes for peace on the fear of nuclear war.

Construct has a much more limited range of application. It emphasizes the intricate or complex nature of a building process, where build may focus on the assembling of separate parts and the resulting connection: to build a bookcase; to construct an office building. The phrase to build a bridge emphasizes engineering problems and the workmen and equipment involved. The same distinctions hold with reference to mental activities ?build pointing to gradual, step-by-step creation through continued efforts.

• Philosophers construct complicated systems for describing existence; Neurotics may be unable to build healthy relationships.

If substituted for build in the last example, construct would have an unfortunate overtone of artificiality.

Like build , erect may involve the assembling of parts. Erect , however, chiefly stress height and vertical position, meaning to put or set something up: to erect a skyscraper; to erect a monument; They finally built a road up the Acrocorinth to the tower that had been erected centuries before. Erect also has figurative uses: to erect a tariff wall; to erect a trade barrier.

Fabricate has least the sense of building a structure on its intended location. In suggesting the assembly and fitting together of parts, it implies more the standardized manufacturing of smaller items in a factory: to fabricate parts for do-it-yourself furniture-making kits. Recent techniques of house-building have, of course, perfected the prefabrication of all units, which are then shipped and assembled on the spot. Unless this type of building or construction is meant, one would still not use fabricate of house or bridge building. In other uses, the word has taken on a strong negative overtone of artificiality or falsity: a friend who fabricates flimsy stories to conceal his irresponsibility.