英和和英

語源

From Late 中期英語 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).

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kənˈtɹækʃn̩/, /kɒn-/
• (General American) IPA: /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/
• (Indic) IPA: /kəɳˈʈrakʃən/, /ˈkɔɳʈrakʃən/
• 韻: -ækʃən
• ハイフネーション: con‧tract‧ion

名詞

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.
         • 2011, Laurence Street, Introduction to Biomedical Engineering Technology‎, second edition (hardcover), Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, 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.

      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. (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.

      7. (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”).
      8. (ring theory, of an ideal in the codomain of a ring homomorphism) The preimage of the given ideal under the given homomorphism.
      9. (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity.
   2. (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering.

派生語

関連する語

参考

• omission
• Category:English contractions

参照

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.