contraction
UK /kənˈtɹækʃn̩/ · US /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/ noun
Forms contractions
- noun An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative). “Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.”
- noun (archaic) An act of entering into a contract or agreement; specifically, a contract of marriage; a contracting; also (obsolete), a betrothal.
- noun (biology, medicine) The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease. “the contraction of malaria”
- noun (archaic or obsolete) An abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.; an abstract, a summary; also (uncountable), brevity, conciseness.
- noun (biology, medicine) A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together.
- noun (biology, medicine) A shortening of a muscle during its use; specifically, a strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
- noun (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth. “The country’s economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.”
- noun (linguistics) A process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme (a word) are reduced or lost, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word. “In the English words didn’t, that’s, and wanna, the endings -n’t, -’s, and -a arose by contraction.”
Synonyms
acquiring catching condensation epitome syncope muscular contraction muscle contraction compression
Antonyms
Etymology
From Late Middle English contraccioun, contraxion (“spasm, contraction; constriction, shrinking; act of pressing together”), from Old French contraction (modern French contraction), from Latin contractiō(n) (“a drawing together, contraction; abridgement, shortening; dejection, despondency”), from contrahō (“to draw things together, assemble, collect, gather; to enter into a contract”) + -tiō(n) (suffix forming nouns relating to actions or their results). Contrahō is derived from con- (prefix denoting a bringing together of objects) + trahō (“to drag, pull”) (probably from Proto-Indo-European *dʰregʰ- (“to drag, pull; to run”)). By surface analysis, contract + -ion (suffix denoting actions or processes, or their results).
Webster’s 1913
- noun The act or process of contracting, shortening, or shrinking; the state of being contracted; as, contraction of the heart, of the pupil of the eye, or of a tendion; the contraction produced by cold.
- noun The process of shortening an operation.
Etymology [L. contractio: cf. F. contraction.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “contraction”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details