contraction
/kɒnˈtɹæk.ʃən/ · noun
Meaning
- A reversible reduction in size.
- A period of economic decline or negative growth.
- A shortening of a muscle when it is used.
- A strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
- 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.
- (English orthography) A word with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe, usually resulting from the above process.
Etymology / origin
No prose etymology has been added yet.
No ancestor words have been linked yet.
Related words
Descendant words
No descendant words have been linked yet.