compress
/kəmˈpɹɛs/ verb C1- To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume. · The force required to compress a spring varies linearly with the displacement.
- To be pressed together or folded by compression into a more economic, easier format. · Our new model compresses easily, ideal for storage and travel
- To condense into a more economic, easier format. · This chart compresses the entire audit report into a few lines on a single diagram.
- To abridge. · If you try to compress the entire book into a three-sentence summary, you will lose a lot of information.
- To make digital information smaller by encoding it using fewer bits.
- To make a pulse or particle bunch shorter by applying dispersion to it.
He/she/it compresses · Past compressed · Past participle compressed · -ing form compressing
Verb forms
- Base form
- compress
- He/she/it
- compresses
- Past
- compressed
- Past participle
- compressed
- -ing form
- compressing
From the library
One piece, about three feet in length, had a very marked indentation at one end, while several were flattened at the sides as if they had been compressed by some considerable weight.
A tall young man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin and compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with beautifully carved gold buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell eye-glass suspended by a silken thread, and which, by an effort of the superciliary and zygomatic muscles, he fixed in his eye, entered, with a half-official air, without smiling or speaking.
Danglars felt the irony and compressed his lips.
I stared in silence at Sherlock Holmes, whose lips were compressed and his brows drawn down over his eyes.
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