compression

Borrowed from Middle French compression, from Latin compressiō.

• IPA^(key): /kɒm.pɹɛʃ.ən/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛʃən

compression (countable and uncountable, plural compressions)

1. An increase in density; the act of compressing, or the state of being compressed; compaction.
2. (automotive) The cycle of an internal combustion engine during which the fuel and air mixture is compressed.
3. (computing) The process by which data is compressed.
   • 2011, Marcelo A. Montemurro, Damián H. Zanette, “Universal Entropy of Word Ordering Across Linguistic Families”, in PLoS ONE‎, retrieved 2012-09-26:

     Due to the presence of long-range correlations in language [21], [22] it is not possible to compute accurate measures of the entropy by estimating block probabilities directly. More efficient nonparametric methods that work even in the presence of long-range correlations are based on the property that the entropy of a sequence is a lower bound to any lossless compressed version of it [15]. Thus, in principle, it is possible to estimate the entropy of a sequence by finding its length after being compressed by an optimal algorithm. In our analysis, we used an efficient entropy estimator derived from the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm that converges to the entropy [19], [23], [24], and shows a robust performance when applied to correlated sequences [25] (see Materials and Methods).

4. (music) The electronic process by which any sound's gain is automatically controlled.
5. (astronomy) The deviation of a heavenly body from a spherical form.

• decompression
• rarefaction

• Compression in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

First known attestation 1314, borrowed from Latin compressiōnem.

• Audio

  (file)

compression f (plural compressions)

1. compression (act, instance of compressing)
2. compression (cycle of an internal combustion engine)

• “compression”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Old French, borrowed from Latin compressiō.

compression f (plural compressions)

1. compression (act, instance of compressing)
   • 1585, Giovanni Marinelli, Thresor des remedes secrets pour les maladies des femmes, page 761:

     compression du ventre

     compression of the abdomen

First known attestation 1314, borrowed from Latin compressiō.

compression oblique singular, f (oblique plural compressions, nominative singular compression, nominative plural compressions)

1. compression (act, instance of compressing)