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Contraction   /kəntrˈækʃən/   Listen
noun
Contraction  n.  
1.
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 tendon; the contraction produced by cold.
2.
(Math.) The process of shortening an operation.
3.
The act of incurring or becoming subject to, as liabilities, obligation, debts, etc.; the process of becoming subject to; as, the contraction of a disease.
4.
Something contracted or abbreviated, as a word or phrase; as, plenipo for plenipotentiary; crim. con. for criminal conversation, etc.
5.
(Gram.) The shortening of a word, or of two words, by the omission of a letter or letters, or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one; as, ne'er for never; can't for can not; don't for do not; it's for it is.
6.
A marriage contract. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contraction" Quotes from Famous Books



... of wharves or overhanging rocks. As they grow larger, they lose something of their gregarious disposition,—they scatter more; and at this time they prefer the sunniest exposures, and like to bask in the light and warmth. They assume every variety of attitude, but move always by the regular contraction and expansion of the disk, which rises and falls with rhythmical alternations, the average number of these movements being from twelve to fifteen in a minute. There can be no doubt that they perceive what is going on about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... the greatest emotion of her experience. As a rule the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well? Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered—with a sickening little contraction of the heart—what, under Heaven, had prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her insensibility made for righteousness, or anyhow for respectability—in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... by a network of cracks and fissures. Every one who is familiar with clay land, or who has observed the bottom of a ditch or frog pond by the roadside, must have observed these cracks, thus caused by the contraction of the soil in drying. The same contraction occurs in drier land, by cold, in Winter; by which, in cold regions, deep rents are made in the earth, and reports, like those of cannon, are often heard. The cracking by drying, however, is more quiet ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... there runs thus: "Si ergo in isto loco mansissem non Ysseal .i. imus esset id est non paruus sed altus .i. magnus et honorabilis." Here id est occurs three times, once in full, and twice represented by the common contraction .i., which is universally used in MSS. of Irish origin for the introduction of a gloss. If we write the sentence as below, we shall see the significance of the different ways in which the expression is written, and ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous


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