contraction

Meaning

Noun

• A reversible reduction in size.
• A period of economic decline or negative growth.
• A shortening of a muscle during its use.
• A strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
• A process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme (a word) are lost or reduced, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word.
• A word with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe, usually resulting from the above process.
• A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity.
• The process of contracting a disease.
• Syncope, the loss of sounds from within a word.
• The acquisition of something, generally negative.
• A distinct stage of wound healing, wherein the wound edges are gradually pulled together.

Related

Opposite words

• expansion
• dilatation

Origin

• From Middle English contraccioun, contraxion, from Old French contraction, from Latin contractiō. Equivalent to contract + -ion