contraction

English
WOTD – 28 August 2023

Etymology
PIE word
*ḱóm

From Late Middle English contraccioun, contraxion (“spasm, contraction; constriction, shrinking; act of pressing together”),[1] from Old French contraction (modern French contraction), from Latin contractiōnem, the accusative singular of contractiō (“a drawing together, contraction; abridgement, shortening; dejection, despondency”), from contrahō (“to draw things together, assemble, collect, gather; to enter into a contract”)[2] + -tiō (suffix forming nouns relating to actions or their results); contrahō is derived from con- (prefix denoting a bringing together of objects) + trahō (“to drag, pull”) (probably from Proto-Indo-European *dʰregʰ- (“to drag, pull; to run”)). The English word is analysable as contract +‎ -ion (suffix denoting actions or processes, or their results).

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /kənˈtɹækʃn̩/, /kɒn-/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/
  • Rhymes: -ækʃən
  • Hyphenation: con‧tract‧ion

Noun

contraction (countable and uncountable, plural contractions)

  1. Senses relating to becoming involved with or entering into, especially entering into a contract.
    1. An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative).
      Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.
    2. (archaic) An act of entering into a contract or agreement; specifically, a contract of marriage; a contracting; also (obsolete), a betrothal.
    3. (biology, medicine) The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease.
      Synonyms: acquiring, catching
      the contraction of malaria
      • 2020 April 8, David Turner, “How Railway Staff were Conduits and Victims of a Pandemic”, in Rail, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 32:
        Railway workers were therefore a perfect subject for research, given the varied roles they undertook. If infection was greatest among the non-public-facing staff, it would suggest – given most worked outside – that contraction was caused by something found in the "atmosphere at large". If affliction was higher among the indoor and public-facing staff, it would suggest that human contact was the cause. And it was the latter point that was proven.
  2. Senses relating to pulling together or shortening.
    1. A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking.
      Antonyms: dilatation, dilation, expansion
      1. (archaic or obsolete) An abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.; an abstract, a summary; also (uncountable), brevity, conciseness.
        (abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.): Synonyms: condensation, epitome
      2. (biology, medicine) A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together.
      3. (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.
      4. (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth.
        The country’s economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.
      5. (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.
        Hyponyms: apheresis, apocope, elision, syncope
        In the English words didn’t, that’s, and wanna, the endings -n’t, -’s, and -a arose by contraction.
      6. (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”)
      7. (ring theory, of an ideal in the codomain of a ring homomorphism) The preimage of the given ideal under the given homomorphism.
      8. (orthography) In the English language: a shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark.
        Don’t is a contraction of do not; and ’til is a contraction of until.
      9. (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity.
    2. (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering.

Derived terms

Translations
act of entering into a contract or agreement — see contracting
abridgement or shortening of writing, etc. — see abridgement,‎ summary
brevity, conciseness — see brevity,‎ conciseness
synonym of syncope — see syncope

See also

References
  1. “contracciǒun, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. Compare “contraction, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2023; “contraction, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

French

Etymology
PIE word
*ḱóm

From Old French contraction, borrowed from Latin contractiōnem, the accusative singular of contractiō (“a drawing together, contraction; abridgement, shortening; dejection, despondency”), from contrahō (“to draw things together, assemble, collect, gather; to enter into a contract”) + -tiō (suffix forming nouns relating to actions or their results); contrahō is derived from con- (prefix denoting a bringing together of objects) + trahō (“to drag, pull”) (probably from Proto-Indo-European *dʰregʰ- (“to drag, pull; to run”)).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kɔ̃.tʁak.sjɔ̃/
  • Audio (Paris)(file)
  • Audio(file)

Noun

contraction f (plural contractions)

  1. contraction

Further reading
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