contraction

1. An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative). (countable, uncountable) · Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.
2. The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease. (countable, uncountable) · the contraction of malaria
3. A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together. (countable, uncountable)
4. A shortening of a muscle during its use; specifically, a strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth. (countable, uncountable)
5. A period of economic decline or negative growth. (countable, uncountable) · The country’s economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.
6. 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. (countable, uncountable) · In the English words didn’t, that’s, and wanna, the endings -n’t, -’s, and -a arose by contraction.
7. A shortened form of a word; in English the omitted letters are often replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark. (countable, uncountable) · Don’t is a contraction of do not; and ’til is a contraction of until.
8. 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”). (countable, uncountable)

Plural contractions