We'd say it is 'lower' not 'higher' as it usually decomposes single higher-level compound operations into multiple simpler operations, and it makes things that

We'd say it is 'lower' not 'higher' as it usually decomposes single higher-level compound operations into multiple simpler operations, and it makes things that were implicit explicit so they can be reasoned about. Usually more verbose therefore. Converting into IR is often called 'lowering'.