Noun

(en noun)

The act of retaining or something retained

* 1599 , , II. iv. 95:

No woman's heart / So big, to hold so much; they lack retention .

The act or power of remembering things

A memory; what is retained in the mind

(medicine) The involuntary withholding of urine and faeces

(obsolete) That which contains something, as a tablet; a means of preserving impressions.

(Shakespeare)

(obsolete) The act of withholding; restraint; reserve.

* 1599 , , V. i. 79:

His life I gave him, and did thereto add / My love without retention or restraint,

(obsolete) A place of custody or confinement.

(legal) The right to withhold a debt, or of retaining property until a debt due to the person claiming the right is duly paid; a lien.

(Erskine)

(Craig)

Noun

(en noun)

The act of assimilating]] or the state of being [[assimilate, assimilated.

* {{quote-book, year=1797, author=An English Lady, title=A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795,, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=--France swarms with Gracchus's and Publicolas, who by imaginary assimilations of acts, which a change of manners has rendered different, fancy themselves more than equal to their prototypes.}}

* {{quote-news, year=1996, date=January 26, author=Bertha Husband, title=Double Identity, work=Chicago Reader citation

, passage=His work generally is full of assimilations and quotations from art that is not Mexican, and he's said, "Nationalism has nothing to do with my work.}}

The metabolic conversion of nutrients into tissue.

* {{quote-book, year=1908, author=Washington Gladden, title=The Church and Modern Life, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=We have great need to be careful in these assimilations ; some kinds of food are rich but not easily digested.}}

(by extension) The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.

(phonology) A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs.

(sociology, cultural studies) The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.