contraction

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of contracting or the state of being contracted.
2. n. A word, as won't from will not, or phrase, as o'clock from of the clock, formed by omitting or combining some of the sounds of a longer phrase.
3. n. The formation of such a word.
4. n. Physiology The shortening and thickening of functioning muscle or muscle fiber.
5. n. A period of decreased business activity.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of drawing together or shrinking; the condition of becoming smaller in extent or dimensions through the nearer approach to one another of the parts; the state of being contracted; a decrease in volume, bulk, or dimensions, as from loss of heat. All bodies, with very few exceptions, expand by the application of heat, and contract when heat is withdrawn. (See expansion and heat.) Contraction also takes place when a gas is condensed to a liquid, and in most cases when a liquid is changed to a solid; there are, however, some exceptions, as water, which expands on solidifying.
2. n. The act of making short, of abridging, or of reducing within a narrower compass by any means; the act of lessening or making smaller in amount; the state of being so lessened; reduction; diminution; abridgment: as, a contraction of the currency.
3. n. Specifically A shortening of a word in pronunciation or in writing: as, can't is a contraction of cannot. In writing, contraction takes place, as in pronunciation, primarily by the omission of intermediate letters; but also by writing in a smaller character the last letter above the word contracted, by running two or more letters into one character, by using symbols representing syllables or words, and by the use of initial letters: as, recd. for received; qm for quam; & for ct. Specifically, in Greek grammar, the uniou of the concurrent vowels of two syllables into one long vowel or diphthong—that is, of οω into ω, of εε into ει, etc. See abbreviation, 2.
4. n. In ancient prosody, the use of a single long time or syllable in place of two short times. Thus, in the dactylic hexameter, a spondee can be substituted in the first four feet for a dactyl , one long being metrically equivalent to two shorts; but such a substitution is admissible only in certain kinds of verse and in certain parts of a foot or line, according to special rules. In the dactylic hexameter, for example, the fifth foot must ordinarily be a dactyl, not a spondee. The converse of contraction is resolution.
5. n. The act of making a contract; the state of being under a contract, especially one of marriage.
6. n. In surgery, an abnormal and permanent alteration in the relative position and forms of parts, arising from various causes, as in ankylosis, distortion, clubfoot, wryneck, etc.
7. n. In mathematics, any device for abridging the mechanical labor of making calculations by diminishing the number of characters written down.
8. n. The act or process of contracting or acquiring: as, the contraction of a debt.

Wiktionary

1. n. A reversible reduction in size.
2. n. economics A period of economic decline or negative growth.
3. n. biology A shortening of a muscle when it is used.
4. n. medicine A strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
5. n. linguistics 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.
6. n. A word with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe, usually resulting from the above process.
7. n. medicine Contracting a disease.
8. n. phonetics Syncope, the loss of sounds from within a word.
9. n. The acquisition of something, generally negative.
10. n. medicine A distinct stage of wound healing, wherein the wound edges are gradually pulled together.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of contracting, shortening, or shrinking; the state of being contracted.
2. n. (Math.) The process of shortening an operation.
3. n. The act of incurring or becoming subject to, as liabilities, obligation, debts, etc.; the process of becoming subject to.
4. n. Something contracted or abbreviated, as a word or phrase; -- as, plenipo for plenipotentiary; crim. con. for criminal conversation, etc.
5. n. (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. n. obsolete A marriage contract.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the process or result of becoming smaller or pressed together
2. n. (physiology) a shortening or tensing of a part or organ (especially of a muscle or muscle fiber)
3. n. a word formed from two or more words by omitting or combining some sounds
4. n. the act of decreasing (something) in size or volume or quantity or scope