# contraction
## English
### Etymology

* PIE word
* *ḱóm
From Late Middle English contraccioun, contraxion (“spasm, contraction; constriction, shrinking; act of pressing together”), from Old French contraction (modern French contraction), from Latin contractiō(n) (“a drawing together, contraction; abridgement, shortening; dejection, despondency”), from contrahō (“to draw things together, assemble, collect, gather; to enter into a contract”) + -tiō(n) (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”)). By surface analysis, contract +‎ -ion (suffix denoting actions or processes, or their results).

### Pronunciation

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

### Noun

contraction (countable and uncountable, plural contractions)
* 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).
    Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.
** (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.
    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.
* 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.
    Antonyms: dilatation, dilation, expansion
*** (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
*** (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.
**** 2011, Laurence Street, Introduction to Biomedical Engineering Technology, page 125:Though occasionally a “flatliner” can be revived with a defib, it is most commonly used to change the uncoordinated contractions of the heart (fibrillation) into a normal sinus rhythm—that is, to defibrillate the heart.
*** (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth.
    The country’s economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.
*** (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.
*** (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”)
*** (ring theory, of an ideal in the codomain of a ring homomorphism) The preimage of the given ideal under the given homomorphism.
*** (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.
*** (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity.
** (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering.

#### Derived terms

* aftercontraction
* anticontraction
* Braxton Hicks contraction
* cocontraction
* contractional
* contractionary
* contractionism
* contractionist
* contractionless
* decontraction
* eccentric contraction
* edge contraction
* haustral contraction
* hypercontraction
* intercontraction
* lanthanide contraction
* length contraction
* Lorentz contraction
* Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction
* mutated contraction
* noncontraction
* overcontraction
* precontraction
* recontraction
* supercontraction
* vasocontraction
* wanna contraction

#### Related terms

* contract
* contractable
* contractant (rare)
* contractation
* contracted (adjective)
* contractedly
* contractedness
* contractee
* contractible
* contractile
* contractility
* contracting (adjective) (noun)
* contractive
* contractly (obsolete)
* contractor
* contractual
* contractually
* contractural
* contracture
* contractured
* extract
* retract
* tractile
* traction

#### See also

* omission
* Category:English contractions

### References

* ↑ “contracciǒun, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
* ↑ Compare “contraction, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2023; “contraction, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

### Further reading

* contraction (grammar) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* elision on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* muscle contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* uterine contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* wound contraction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* contraction (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* “contraction”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

## 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: /kɔ̃.tʁak.sjɔ̃/
* Audio (Paris):(file)
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

contraction f (plural contractions)
* contraction

#### Related terms

* contracter
* contrat

### Further reading

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