Noun

(en noun)

A reversible reduction in size.

(economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth.

The country's economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.

(biology) A shortening of a muscle when it is used.

(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 free morpheme (a word) are lost or reduced, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word.

In English ''didn't'', ''that's'', and ''wanna'', the endings ''-n't'', ''-'s'', and ''-a'' arose by contraction .

(English orthography) A word with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe, usually resulting from the above process.

"Don't" is a contraction of "do not."

(medicine) Contracting a disease.

The contraction of AIDS from toilet seats is extremely rare.

(phonetics) Syncope, the loss of sounds from within a word.

The acquisition of something, generally negative.

Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.

(medicine) A distinct stage of wound healing, wherein the wound edges are gradually pulled together.

Noun

(en-noun)

The tendency to attract.

The feeling of being attracted.

* , chapter=5

, title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose. And the queerer the cure for those ailings the bigger the attraction . A place like the Right Livers' Rest was bound to draw freaks, same as molasses draws flies.}}

An event or location that has a tendency to attract visitors.

(chess) The sacrifice of pieces in order to expose the enemy king.