contraction
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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Etymology
| PIE word |
|---|
| *ḱóm |
From Late Middle English contraccioun, contraxion (“spasm, contraction; constriction, shrinking; act of pressing together”),[1] 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”)[2] + -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).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /kənˈtɹækʃn̩/, /kɒn-/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/
- Rhymes: -ækʃən
- Hyphenation: con‧tract‧ion
Noun
contraction (countable and uncountable, plural contractions)
- Senses relating to becoming involved with or entering into, especially entering into a contract.
- 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.
- (archaic) An act of entering into a contract or agreement; specifically, a contract of marriage; a contracting; also (obsolete), a betrothal.
- (biology, medicine) The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease.
- 2020 April 8, David Turner, “How Railway Staff were Conduits and Victims of a Pandemic”, in Rail, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 32:
- Railway workers were therefore a perfect subject for research, given the varied roles they undertook. If infection was greatest among the non-public-facing staff, it would suggest – given most worked outside – that contraction was caused by something found in the "atmosphere at large". If affliction was higher among the indoor and public-facing staff, it would suggest that human contact was the cause. And it was the latter point that was proven.
- An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative).
- Senses relating to pulling together or shortening.
- A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking.
- Antonyms: dilatation, dilation, expansion
- (archaic or obsolete) An abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.; an abstract, a summary; also (uncountable), brevity, conciseness.
- (abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.): Synonyms: condensation, epitome
- (biology, medicine) A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together.
- (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.
- 2011, Laurence Street, Introduction to Biomedical Engineering Technology, page 125:
- Though occasionally a “flatliner” can be revived with a defib, it is most commonly used to change the uncoordinated contractions of the heart (fibrillation) into a normal sinus rhythm—that is, to defibrillate the heart.
- (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth.
- The country’s economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.
- (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.
- (linguistics, phonology, prosody) Synonym of syncope (“the elision or loss of a sound from the interior of a word, especially of a vowel sound with loss of a syllable”)
- (ring theory, of an ideal in the codomain of a ring homomorphism) The preimage of the given ideal under the given homomorphism.
- (orthography) In the English language: a shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark.
- Don’t is a contraction of do not; and ’til is a contraction of until.
- (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity.
- (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering.
- A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking.
Derived terms
- aftercontraction
- anticontraction
- Braxton Hicks contraction
- cocontraction
- contractional
- contractionary
- contractionism
- contractionist
- contractionless
- decontraction
- eccentric contraction
- haustral contraction
- hypercontraction
- intercontraction
- lanthanide contraction
- length contraction
- Lorentz contraction
- Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction
- mutated contraction
- noncontraction
- overcontraction
- precontraction
- recontraction
- supercontraction
- vasocontraction
- wanna contraction
Related terms
- contract
- contractable
- contractant (rare)
- contractation
- contracted (adjective)
- contractedly
- contractedness
- contractee
- contractible
- contractile
- contractility
- contracting (adjective, noun)
- contractive
- contractly (obsolete)
- contractor
- contractual
- contractually
- contractural
- contracture
- contractured
- extract
- retract
- tractile
- traction
Translations
act of incurring debt; act of acquiring something (generally negative)
act of entering into a contract or agreement — see contracting
process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease
|
(sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume
|
stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together
|
shortening of a muscle during its use
|
strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth
|
period of economic decline or negative growth
process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme are reduced or lost
|
synonym of syncope — see syncope
shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark
|
shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity
|
See also
References
- “contracciǒun, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
- Compare “contraction, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2023; “contraction, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Further reading
contraction (grammar) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - elision on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- muscle contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- uterine contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- wound contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- contraction (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- “contraction”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
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