(medicine) A strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
(linguistics) A process whereby one or more sounds of a freemorpheme (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.
“This leads to a contraction in the size of the financial sector.”
“It may be passive dilatation or contraction of the blood vessels by the change of the hydrostatic pressure.”
“As the inevitable consolidation process proceeds in response to the many pressures that the industry faces, job contraction may be inevitable.”
contract
An agreement between two or more parties, to perform a specific job or work order, often temporary or of fixed duration and usually governed by a written agreement.
“As the relation of contractor and contractee is voluntary, the consequences attaching to the relation must be voluntary.”
“The contracts are said to avoid the need for legal action and can encourage the contractee to change his or her behaviour by facing up to what they have done.”
“What is contractibility without muscular fibre, or secretion without a secreting gland?”
“Analysis of their lungs showed that their airways were clogged with white blood cells, mostly of a type called eosinophils, that caused mucus secretion, tissue damage and changes in muscle contractibility.”
“Recent evidence suggests that inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis by non steroidal anti inflammatory compounds may be related to decreased uterine contractibility.”