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| NOUN |
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| /kənˈtrækʃn/ |
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| 1 | C medical a movement of a muscle in which it becomes tighter, especially the strong painful movement of the muscles of a woman’ s womb that help push a baby out during birth （尤指分娩时子宫的）收缩，挛缩 |
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| 2 | U the process of becoming smaller 收缩；缩小 |
| the contraction of cooling metal 金属冷却时的收缩 |
| There is likely to be further contraction of the dot.com sector as more firms go bankrupt. 随着更多公司破产，网络行业很可能进一步收缩。 |
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| 3 | C linguistics a word made by leaving out a letter or letters of a word or words. For example ‘can’ t’ is a contraction of the word ‘cannot’ . 缩约词，缩约形式（如can’ 是cannot 的缩约形式） |
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