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Shrinkage   /ʃrˈɪŋkɪdʒ/   Listen
Shrinkage

noun
1.
Process or result of becoming less or smaller.  Synonym: shrinking.
2.
The amount by which something shrinks.
3.
The act of stealing goods that are on display in a store.  Synonym: shoplifting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shrinkage" Quotes from Famous Books



... induced by an old system company to enact the role of sucker surpasses my comprehension. Five years ago the net assets of the largest old line life insurance company in the world amounted to $165,000,000, of which more than $158,000,000 was legal reserve. Had a shrinkage of 10 per cent occurred in the value of its investments its reserve would have been impaired and the corporation declared insolvent. So long ago as 1878 the Union Mutual Life Insurance Co. acknowledged over the signatures of its general officers that it had collected from its policy holders ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... 1906.] In 1847 we were living in a large white house on the corner of Hill and Main Streets—a house that still stands, but isn't large now, although it hasn't lost a plank; I saw it a year ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months afterward. Ours was not the only family in the house, there was another—Dr. Grant's. One day Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... squeezed joint is common. In this case, the edges are planed so as to be very slightly concave from end to end. The object of this is to counteract the subsequent shrinkage which is likely to take place at the ends of the boards before it does at the middle. The pressure of the clamps may be depended upon to close up the middle, and, especially if dowels are inserted, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... should present an even' surface on the breast, the opposite effect will be produced if the false body is unduly large, as then, in place of the evenness so desirable, a division will appear in the centre of the body, which entirely mars the beautiful symmetry of the sea-bird's breast. No perceptible shrinkage can, however, occur if the body is properly made and packed; and here is shown the vast superiority of the made body of well-wrapped tow over that made of loose cotton inserted in ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... shrinkage of the Aral Sea is resulting in growing concentrations of chemical pesticides and natural salts; these substances are then blown from the increasingly exposed lake bed and contribute to desertification; water pollution ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and all." Pieces several inches in length of cobs unground were sometimes contained in it. It always seemed wholesome, though moist, almost watery. Its dimensions were a little less than 7 inches long, 3 or 4 wide, and 3 thick. I managed to bring home a loaf, and we were amazed at the shrinkage to a quarter of its original size. It had become very hard. We broke it in two, and found inside what appeared to ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... an unbroken tradition, was produced by generations and generations of gentlemen. The other is one of those beings who seem to have been called into existence solely by the modern way of life, by express trains and ocean greyhounds, by the shrinkage of continents and the vibration of the twentieth-century world. But the chief difference, the difference that made "Le Sacre du printemps" almost antithetical to "Pelleas et Melisande," is essentially the divergence between two cardinal manners of apprehending life. Debussy, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white immigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... and Great Muddy River Railroad as the entering wedge of his argument. Hal owned a considerable block of stock, earning the handsome dividend of eight per cent. Under attacks possibly leading to adverse legislation, this return might well be reduced and Hal's own income suffer a shrinkage. Therefore, in the interests of all concerned, Hal ought to keep his hands off the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... and sea, coast and contour, hill and valley, dale and gorge, earth-sculpture generally—all are due to the ceaseless interaction of these separately small and unnoticeable causes, aided or retarded by the slow effects of elevation or depression from the earth's shrinkage towards its own centre. Geology, in short, has shown us that the world is what it is, not by virtue of a single sudden creative act, nor by virtue of successive terrible and recurrent cataclysms, but by virtue of the slow continuous action ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... sand or mud. We can see these appearances beneath our feet, as we walk over the pavement of almost any of our cities. Such slabs are also occasionally marked by irregular protuberances, being the casts of hollows or cracks produced in ancient tide-beaches by shrinkage. In many instances, the footprints of animals are marked by such lines passing through them, shewing how the beach had dried and cracked in the sun after the animals had walked over it. In the quarries at Stourton, in Cheshire, some years ago, a gentleman named ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... entry-book what has come in. We know now what there is remaining. We find that in bulky goods, such as cables and anchors and ships' boilers and suchlike, the accounts tally exactly, but in the small rope, and above all in the copper, there is a big shrinkage. I will read you the figures ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... want was capital. In order to make these articles of good quality, it is of the first importance that all stock in them shall be well seasoned, for if it is not, changes of temperature will produce shrinkage and warping. The wood should be either kiln-dried—a novelty then—or dried by long keeping in sheds, and it was important to buy largely when there was a good source, and store for future use. These things the Brook Farmers could not do, and consequently ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... This shrinkage also means that the Pentagon's good faith strategic reviews aimed at dealing with our future security needs may be caught up in the defense budget debate over downsizing and could too easily drift into becoming advocacy or marketing documents. As the services are ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... of some three thousand miles, or the exact width of the Atlantic Ocean—and ranges from a lofty tolerance in good times to unreserved bickering in bad. Why? Because they are geographically too far apart. But with the shrinkage of the earth's surface produced by the effects of electricity and steam, that geographical abyss yawns much less widely than it did. So let us get together, whether in couples or in millions. The thing has to be done. ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay

... shown to be the cast of the central pith of these conifers, amongst which may be mentioned cordaites, araucarites, and dadoxylon.. The central cores had become replaced with inorganic matter after the pith had shrunk and left the space empty. This shrinkage of the pith is a process which takes place in many plants even when living, and instances will at once occur, in which the stems of various species of shrubs when broken open exhibit the remains ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... advantages in his favor. Good people look on and think that it is gold that is going up and down; that their money is a dollar still, and trade and traffic in that belief. But the shrewd speculator calculates daily the depreciation of our note, the shortening of the yard stick, the shrinkage of the acre, the lessening of the ton, and thus it is that he daily adds to his gains from the indifference or delusion of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... a number of oak field-gates made, but as the timber was barely seasoned, we were afraid shrinkage might take place in the mortises and tenons, and it was an agreeable surprise to find in a year or two that nothing of the kind had happened. The mortise hole had apparently got smaller, and still fitted the shrunken tenon ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... for aluminum castings provision must be made for shrinkage to a greater extent than with any ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... exception that it does not run through the bottom rail. This is an advantage if the bottom edge of the rail is in evidence, or if it is required to glue a moulding or hardwood facing slip on the lower edge. The glue adheres better with the grain than it would end way of the grain, and if slight shrinkage occurs across the width of the bottom rail the moulding would not be forced away by the upright (see example at Fig. ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... The largest drive in the history of the trail had taken place that summer, and the failure of the West and Northwest to absorb the entire offerings of the drovers made the old firm apprehensive of the future. There was a noticeable shrinkage in our profits from trail operations, but with the supposition that it was merely an off year, the matter was passed for the present. It was the opinion of the directors of the new company that no dividends should ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... effects whereof were grievously visible in their privations. Meantime it had become necessary that Mrs. Cafferty should adjust herself to a changing environment. A rise or fall in wages is automatically followed by a similar enlargement or shrinkage of one's necessities, and the consequent difference is registered at all points of one's life-contact. The physical and mental activities of a well-to-do person can reach out to a horizon, while those of very poor people are limited to their immediate, stagnant atmosphere, and so the lives of a ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... will so enlarge your chasm, that a great volume of water will rush into the red-hot interior, which will cause a series of such terrific eruptions that large islands will be upheaved. By the reduction of the heat of that part of the interior there will also be a shrinkage, which, in connection with the explosions, will cause the earth's solid crust to be thrown up in folds till whole continents appear. Some of the water displaced by the new land will also, as a result of the cooling, be able permanently to penetrate farther, thereby ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... fine clay-particles that are the chief cause of the puddling of clay soils, their flocculation does much to destroy this objectionable property. Another reason why lime renders a clay soil more friable when dry is, that lime does not undergo any shrinkage in dry weather. As clay soils shrink very much in drying, the mixture with such a substance as lime tends to minimise this tendency to cake in hard lumps. The effect of even a very small addition of lime to a clay ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... The shrinkage of credit would bring a multitude of commercial failures; the diminution of trade and the cessation of manufactures a great many more. The unemployed would be counted by the million, and would have to be kept at the ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson

... wild anguish and fierce joy, he looked at the magic skin to see what this vehement wish had cost him. Nothing! Not a sign of shrinkage could be discerned. The fact was that even the greatest talisman could not realise a desire which had long since been fulfilled. Pauline had loved Raphael from the time when they first met; while he had been priding himself on living on twelve pounds a year, she had been painting screens up ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... membership in 1894 and 1895 was due only to a very small extent to defections. The introduction of the linotype decreased the opportunity for employment in the trade, and the gradual shrinkage in the amount of German printing done in the United States due to the falling off in German immigration was accentuated ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... treaties, edicts, signed by French kings and ministers, had recognized Acadia as extending over New Brunswick and a part of Maine. Four censuses of Acadia while it belonged to the French had recognized the mainland as included in it; and so do also the early French maps. Its prodigious shrinkage was simply the consequence of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... again, on the same lines, in a dark medium, and the colours were laid flat inside the dark lines, accepting these lines as if they had been wires around cloisons. All painted enamels had to be enamelled on the back as well, to prevent warping in the furnace when the shrinkage took place. After each layer of colour the whole plate was fired. In the fifteenth century these enamels were popular and retained some semblance of respect for the limitation of material; later, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... devils to serpents, and of their applause to "a dismal universal hiss" was perhaps devised to cast a slur upon the success of his mission. Some critics have professed to discern a certain progressive degradation and shrinkage in Satan as the poem proceeds. But his original creation lived on in the imagination and memory of Milton, and was revived, with an added pathos, in Paradise Regained. The most moving of all Satan's speeches is perhaps the long pleading there made in answer to the challenge of Christ, and its ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... journey. Some temperature charts, in illustration of this point, are added to the cases quoted later. The explanation of the recurrent haemorrhages is, I think, to be found in the reduction of the intra-thoracic pressure with coagulation and shrinkage of the clot in the pleura in the patients kept quiet in bed, while in the patients who had to travel it was probably the result of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are staying on, en pension, until the next year's full re-opening, cannot help being somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily shrinkage in the stream of comradeship. One gets unsettled, depressed, and inclined to be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don't know this hotel out of the season, and what fun ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... been without food for thirty days. His muscles have disappeared, his organs have shrunk, he can not walk; he is only skin and bones. The disappearance of the muscles is like the disappearance of labor's jobs in hard times. The shrinkage of the vital organs is like the shrinkage of capital and values. When the starved man is faced with food he can not set in and eat a regular dinner. He must be fed on a teaspoonful of soup, and it is many months before his muscles come back, his organs ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... extent, yes; but there could be no such shrinkage as this unless there was a leak in the tank. I never dreamed the supply was so low. Well, it is my own fault. I should have made sure everything ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... hot, Southwestern Sun. And, exploration in and quick ascent from the canyons before them would before long call for the use of ballast. The boys agreed that the time had arrived to utilize their liquid hydrogen. The shrinkage that ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... have the impression that we have made material advances in training up men with strength of character. On the contrary, I fear that we are on a downward path. The number of "characters" becomes smaller. And this is connected with the shrinkage in private and individual work done during a lad's school life. For it is only by means of independent work that the pupil learns to hold his own against external difficulties, and to find in his own strength, in his ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... the sprat, on the principle of equal labour-time? Will highly skilled workers be satisfied to receive the same wages as the most unskilled labourers? Will equal labour-time pay for all not lead to universal dawdling, shrinkage in production, and consequent starvation? Would workers not strive to get the maximum pay for the minimum work? To prevent dawdling, could it be ascertained how long it should take to repair a machine, paint a picture, amputate a leg, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... represented by the artist as persons of two dimensions only—in other words, flat as a shadow—were standing in a row in paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street the three comrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and shrinkage, so that they were but a half-invisible film upon the reality of the grain, and knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a matter of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to Stannidge the landlord's neglect, as from the lack of a painter ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... his communications with regard to himself, which sometimes conveyed the impression that he was not speaking the truth. His acquaintances had been known to say that they invariably allowed a half for shrinkage in his statements, and held the other ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... yes, old friends, you well may stare: I have seen better days," he said: "But now with shrinkage, loss, and care, Your Santa Claus scarce ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... disclosed. I recall Le Diable d'Argent as in particular a radiant revelation—kept before us a whole long evening and as an almost blinding glare; which was quite right for the donnee, the gradual shrinkage of the Shining One, the money-monster hugely inflated at first, to all the successive degrees of loose bagginess as he leads the reckless young man he has originally contracted with from dazzling pleasure ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... has all the advantages of a soft wood, and none of its disadvantages. It is not apt to warp, like poplar or birch, and its shrinking unit is less than that of any other wood, excepting redwood. There is practically no shrinkage in redwood. ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... the price will rise if the demand is increased while the supply remains the same, or if the supply is decreased while the demand remains the same. A compulsory eight hours day would practically mean a shrinkage in the supply of labour offered in the market, and the first effect would indisputably be a rise in the price of labour. To reduce by one-third at a single blow the amount of labour put forth in a day by any class of workers, is precisely equivalent to a sudden removal of one-third of these ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson



Words linked to "Shrinkage" :   theft, compression, shoplifting, lessening, drop-off, thieving, condensation, decrease, contraction, decrement, shrink, stealing, thievery, larceny



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