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CONTRACTING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Becoming infected
Example:
the contracting of a serious illness can be financially catastrophic
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("contracting" is a kind of...):
acquiring; getting (the act of acquiring something)
Derivation:
contract (be stricken by an illness, fall victim to an illness)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb contract
Context examples:
MTs can transmit mechanical signals and, like rods or struts, resist compression in contracting heart cells.
(Microtubules’ role in heart cell contraction revealed, NIH)
According to the WHO, poverty increases the risk of contracting leishmaniasis.
(Study uncovers cause of aggressive leishmaniasis strain, SciDev.Net)
The mudstone indicates the presence of bodies of standing water in the form of lakes that remained for long periods of time, possibly repeatedly expanding and contracting during hundreds to millions of years.
(NASA's Curiosity Rover Team Confirms Ancient Lakes on Mars, NASA)
Once part of a much larger ice field, Yakutat has been contracting for hundreds of years.
(Retreat of Yakutat Glacier, NASA)
New NASA-funded research suggests that Mercury is contracting even today, joining Earth as a tectonically active planet.
(The Incredible Shrinking Mercury is Active After All, NASA)
That's relatively fresh in geologic terms; previous studies have estimated these basins all stopped contracting about 1.2 billion years ago.
(Study Finds New Wrinkles on Earth's Moon, NASA)
A convulsion marked by alternating contracting and relaxing of the muscles.
(Clonic Convulsion, NCI Thesaurus)
Instead of intermittently contracting, the atria quiver continuously in a chaotic pattern, causing a totally irregular, often tachycardia ventricular rate.
(Chronic Atrial Fibrillation, NCI Thesaurus)
My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They were hard as iron. And I observed, also, that his whole body had unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles were softly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and across the shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles contracting, the fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; and that even the eyes had changed expression and into them were coming watchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
