Wiktionary:Word of the day/2023/August 28

edit · refresh · view Word of the day for August 28

contraction n

Senses relating to becoming involved with or entering into, especially entering into a contract. An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative). (archaic) An act of entering into a contract or agreement; specifically, a contract of marriage; a contracting; also (obsolete), a betrothal. (biology, medicine) The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease. Senses relating to pulling together or shortening. A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking. (archaic or obsolete) An abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.; an abstract, a summary; also (uncountable), brevity, conciseness. (biology, medicine) A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together. (biology, medicine) A shortening of a muscle during its use; specifically, a strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth. (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth. (linguistics) A process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme (a word) are reduced or lost, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word. (linguistics, phonology, prosody) Synonym of syncope (“the elision or loss of a sound from the interior of a word, especially of a vowel sound with loss of a syllable”) (orthography) In the English language: a shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark. (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity. (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering. The English doctor John Braxton Hicks, who first described what are now called Braxton Hicks contractions—uterine contractions which do not result in childbirth—died on this day in 1897.

← yesterday | About Word of the Day • Nominate a word • Leave feedback | tomorrow →