shrink English
Verb
To cause to become smaller.
- The dryer shrank my sweater.
To become smaller; to contract.
- This garment will shrink when wet.
* Francis Bacon
- I have not found that water, by mixture of ashes, will shrink or draw into less room.
* Dryden
- And shrink like parchment in consuming fire.
To cower or flinch.
- Molly shrank away from the blows of the whip.
To draw back; to withdraw.
* Milton
- The Libya Hammon shrinks his horn.
(figuratively) To withdraw or retire, as from danger.
* Alexander Pope
- What happier natures shrink at with affright, / The hard inhabitant contends is right.
* Jowett (Thucyd.)
- They assisted us against the Thebans when you shrank from the task.
Synonyms
* (avoid an unwanted task) funk, shirk
Antonyms
* (to cause to become smaller) expand, grow, enlarge, stretch
* (become smaller) expand, grow, enlarge, stretch
Noun
( en noun)
shrinkage; contraction; recoil
- Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink , / That I had less to praise. — Leigh Hunt.
(slang, sometimes, pejorative) A psychiatrist or therapist; a head-shrinker.
- You need to see a shrink .
- My shrink said that he was an enabler, bad for me.
* 1994 , (Green Day),
- I went to a shrink , to analyze my dreams. He said it's lack of sex that's bringing my down.''
Usage notes
* The slang sense was originally pejorative, expressing a distrust of practitioners in the field. It is now not as belittling or trivializing.
Synonyms
* head-shrinker
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stickle English
Verb
( en-verb)
(obsolete) To act as referee or arbiter; to mediate.
To argue or struggle (for).
* 1897 , Henry James, What Maisie Knew :
- ‘She has other people than poor little you to think about, and has gone abroad with them; so you needn't be in the least afraid she'll stickle this time for her rights.’
To raise objections; to argue stubbornly, especially over minor or trivial matters.
(obsolete) To separate, as combatants; hence, to quiet, to appease, as disputants.
* Drayton
- Which [question] violently they pursue, / Nor stickled would they be.
(obsolete) To intervene in; to stop, or put an end to, by intervening.
* Sir Philip Sidney
- They ran to him, and, pulling him back by force, stickled that unnatural fray.
(obsolete) To separate combatants by intervening.
* Dryden
- When he [the angel] sees half of the Christians killed, and the rest in a fair way of being routed, he stickles betwixt the remainder of God's host and the race of fiends.
(obsolete) To contend, contest, or altercate, especially in a pertinacious manner on insufficient grounds.
* Hudibras
- Fortune, as she's wont, turned fickle, / And for the foe began to stickle .
* Dryden
- for paltry punk they roar and stickle
* Hazlitt
- the obstinacy with which he stickles for the wrong
Related terms
* stickler
Noun
( en noun)
(UK, dialect) A shallow rapid in a river.
(UK, dialect) The current below a waterfall.
* W. Browne
- Patient anglers, standing all the day / Near to some shallow stickle or deep bay.
External links
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Anagrams
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