1 [U] the process of becoming smaller:
the expansion and contraction of the metal * The sudden contraction of the markets left them with a lot of unwanted stock. * Physical stress caused by expansion and contraction can damage components within the computer.
2 [C,U] a sudden and painful tightening of muscles, especially the tightening of the muscles around a woman's WOMB that happen when she is giving birth to a child:
The contractions started coming every five minutes.
3 [C] (linguistics) a short from of a word:
'He's' may be a contraction of 'he is' or 'he has'.
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of contraction come from?
This entry for contraction is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is contraction a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, contraction is tagged as noun.
Does contraction appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — contraction appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
