1 [U,C,usually pl.] ~ (between A and B) a situation in which people do not trust each other, or feel unfriendly towards each other, and which may cause them to attack each other:
There is mounting tension along the border. * international / racial / political tensions * Family tensions and conflicts may lead to violence. * The incident has further increased tension between the two countries.
2 [C,U] ~ (between A and B) a situation in which the fact that there are different needs or interests causes difficulties:
There is often a tension between the aims of the company and the wishes of the employees.
3 [U] a feeling of anxiety and stress that makes it impossible to relax:
nervous tension * We laughed and that helped ease the tension. * Walking and swimming are excellent for releasing tension. * a tension headache
4 [U] the feeling of fear and excitement that is created by a writer or a film/movie DIRECTOR:
dramatic tension * As the movie progresses the tension builds.
5 [U] the state of being stretched tight; the extent to which sth is stretched tight:
muscular tension * Adjust the string tension of your tennis racket to suit your style of playing. * When knitting, try to keep the same tension throughout. * Massage can relieve tension in your shoulders and back.
seealsoSURFACETENSION
verb [VN] (technical) to make a wire, sail, etc. tight and stretched
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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.
This entry for tension is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is tension a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, tension is tagged as noun.
Does tension appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — tension 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.
