(n.) The act or process of contracting, shortening, or shrinking; the state of being contracted; as, contraction of the heart, of the pupil of the eye, or of a tendion; the contraction produced by cold.
(n.) The process of shortening an operation.
(n.) The act of incurring or becoming subject to, as liabilities, obligation, debts, etc.; the process of becoming subject to; as, the contraction of a disease.
(n.) Something contracted or abbreviated, as a word or phrase; -- as, plenipo for plenipotentiary; crim. con. for criminal conversation, etc.
(n.) The shortening of a word, or of two words, by the omission of a letter or letters, or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one; as, ne'er for never; can't for can not; don't for do not; it's for it is.
(n.) A marriage contract.
Example Sentences:
(1) During the performance of propulsive waves of the oesophagus the implanted vagus nerve caused clonic to tetanic contractions of the sternohyoid muscle, thus proving the oesophagomotor genesis of the reinnervating nerve fibres.
(2) But RWE admitted it had often only been able to retain customers with expired contracts by offering them new deals with more favourable conditions.
(3) Thus adrenaline, via pre- and post-junctional adrenoceptors, may contribute to enhanced vascular smooth muscle contraction, which most likely is sensitized by the elevated intracellular calcium concentration.
(4) Further, the maximal increase in force of contraction was measured using papillary muscle strips from some of these patients.
(5) When subjects centered themselves actively, or additionally, contracted trunk flexor or extensor muscles to predetermined levels of activity, no increase in trunk positioning accuracy was found.
(6) Twitch-tetanus ratios were calculated and found not to be related to unit contraction time.6.
(7) Selective removal of endothelium had no effect on BK-induced contraction or the action of the antagonists.
(8) The increased muscular strength in due to a rise of calcaemia, improved muscle contraction and probably also due to the mentioned nutritional factors.
(9) However, there was not a relationship between the contraction curve of the gallbladder and the bile flow into the duodenum.
(10) In in vitro preparations GABA (10(-7) - 10(-3) M) elicited a dose-dependent relaxation; a decrease in the spontaneous contractions was sometimes observed.
(11) There was no correlation between disturbed gastric clearance, impaired gall bladder contraction, and prolonged colonic transit time in the patients with cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy nor was there a correlation between any disturbed motor function and age or duration of diabetes.
(12) Noradrenaline decreased the phasic contraction amplitude of the circular muscle and exerted a stimulant effect on the tone which suggested an existence of two alpha 1-adrenoceptor subtypes.
(13) It may, however, be useful to compare local wall dynamics in the more isometrically-contracting basal segment with those in the middle portion which brings about most of the emptying of the ventricle.
(14) Upon depletion of ATP in contraction, the P2 intensity reverted to the original rigor level, accompanied by development of rigor tension.
(15) L-NAME abolished B contractions in a dose-dependent fashion.
(16) The power spectrum of the EMG was analyzed during isometric contractions of the shoulder muscles.
(17) A23187 had only a transient effect on KCl-contracted coronary arteries.
(18) When caffeine evokes a contraction, and only then, crayfish muscle fibers become refractory to a second challenge with caffeine for up to 20 min in the standard saline (5 mM K(o)).
(19) Dopamine at concentrations over 10(-5)M induced contractions of tracheal muscle strips and repeated exposures resulted in desensitization (tachyphylaxis) of the muscle.
(20) In the present study we examined cholecystokinin release and gallbladder contraction after oral administration of a commercial fatty meal (Sorbitract; Dagra, Diemen, The Netherlands) using ultrasonography in eight normal subjects and eight gallstone patients before and after 1 and 4 weeks of treatment with ursodeoxycholic acid (10 mg kg-1.day-1).
Contraption
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) My new contraption simulated smoking, I learned, through a battery which heated and vaporised liquid nicotine in water and propylene glycol.
(2) Anja Vestergaard brings out the robot and I come foot-to-wheel with the contraption that is supposedly revolutionising Denmark's care for the elderly.
(3) The bike is hideous, a vast contraption with an illuminated panel that flashes your heart-rate at you.
(4) Over the last few years, at the kinds of conferences where the world's technological elite gathers to mainline caffeine and determine the course of history, Google has entertained the crowds with a contraption it calls Liquid Galaxy .
(5) He tried to capture its character – which he described as a “diabolical contraption, a dusty hunk of electric and mechanical hardware that reminded me of the disturbing 1950’s Quatermass science fiction television series” – in a near-lifesize two metre by three metre Portrait of a Dead Witch, which he also intended as a joke about the contemporary craze for computer-generated art.
(6) In the build-up to the Broncos game, Tomsula made Okoye take on blockers inside this contraption.
(7) British artist Matt Hope has designed a “breathing bicycle” , a home-made Heath Robinson-style contraption that filters air as you pedal along and feeds it through a tube into a fighter-pilot breathing mask.
(8) Originally released as an unfinished beta version, players had to wade through software bugs and mechanical uncertainties, using the game's complex crafting system to build homes and contraptions, but having to share information on what worked where – there was no tutorial.
(9) You can see the bite marks.” Clapper sits me down at a conference table with some chocolate biscuits and begins puffing on a black contraption with a window through which I can see a yellow-brown liquid sloshing.
(10) The device the doctor held in his hand was not a contraption you expect to find in a rural hospital near the banks of the Nile.
(11) Known as bathing machines, and looking like beach huts on wheels, these contraptions became a ubiquitous feature of the Victorian seaside, helping to protect the modesty of generations of our forebears until it became socially acceptable to walk across the beach in a bathing costume.
(12) Photograph: Robert Goddyn Architecture Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age From the glamorous glazed living rooms of Californian Case Study houses, perched precipitously above the twinkling lights of 1950s LA, to the rusting contraptions of the German industrial belt, this expansive survey of architectural photography will show a broad cross-section of images from the 1930s to the present day.
(13) Looking further afield, both in distance and eccentricity, the Malaysian entries include an invention to make cows more conspicuous at night and a complex gadget that finds the end of a roll of adhesive tape, while Adam Ben-Dror of New Zealand offers a contraption that allows bored or lonely goldfish "to roam freely on land" inside a tank with wheels.
(14) We see the moment Reese volunteers to save John Connor’s mother – and his future kind-of girlfriend – and then he gets blasted back to 1984 in a massive, and I mean massive , blue time-travel light-beam contraption.
(15) In a best-case scenario, the contraption should be operational by Monday.
(16) As a vision of the imminent future, it might strike a chill into Europhobic hearts: a German contraption measuring 140 metres (460ft) in length, designed to drive into the very core of the City within months.
(17) Culture A bunch of Mayan villagers are hanging out in the jungle, improbably hunting big game with a zany Indiana Jones-style contraption that looks like a giant sideways meat tenderiser.
(18) Over the next few days cranes will attempt to lower the 100-tonne contraption around 5,000ft (1,500 metres) to the sea floor and position it over a leaking pipe that has been gushing 210,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf.
(19) He didn’t succeed, but one of his contraptions did develop into the heart-lung machine so crucial for open-heart surgery.
(20) But after the first 10 shots he hit me to the body, covered in this bullet‑proof contraption, I walked away and laughed from deep within my stomach – without noise.