How to Use contraction in a Sentence

contraction

noun
  • Two teams were eliminated in the contraction of the baseball league.
  • The hot metal undergoes contraction as it cools.
  • She felt contractions every two minutes.
  • Then came the 2023 strikes and the streaming contraction.
    — Lane Brown, Vulture, 3 June 2025
  • But the strikes were not the only causes of the contraction, the report found.
    — Christi Carras, Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2023
  • Writhing on the living room floor in the swell of a fierce contraction, Martha rolls over and bites Sean’s calf.
    — Hillary Kelly, Vulture, 12 Jan. 2021
  • In April, the forecast was for an 8% to 10% contraction.
    — Clare Sebastian, CNN, 28 Aug. 2022
  • That’s still the sharpest annual contraction since the Great Frost of 1709.
    — Hanna Ziady, CNN, 4 Sep. 2023
  • There has not been a contraction like this one since World War II.
    — Dick Lepre, National Review, 14 Dec. 2022
  • His first name, Sanche, was a contraction of St. Charles.
    — Bob Drogin, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023
  • The growth during the third quarter follows a contraction during the first half of the year.
    — CBS News, 22 Dec. 2022
  • From here, focus on the contraction and the squeeze—even look down at your chest to watch the squeeze, Samuel advises.
    — Jeff Tomko, Men's Health, 23 June 2022
  • That would be the largest earnings contraction since the second quarter of 2020.
    — Hannah Miao, WSJ, 6 Apr. 2023
  • Even after the strike — or strikes — and all this contraction, the sandbox is still going to be big.
    — Mikey O'Connell, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 June 2023
  • But there are people will use a bounce from the floor to make the contraction at the beginning of the move easier.
    — Cori Ritchey, Men's Health, 27 Feb. 2023
  • To ease the pain of her contractions, doctors gave her narcotics.
    — Shoshana Walter, USA TODAY, 11 Dec. 2024
  • Yet what played out was a contraction of 3.1%—still a huge loss of output, but not nearly as dire.
    — Time, 12 Jan. 2023
  • The contraction resumes a more than two-year downward trend in the sector.
    — Tobias Burns, The Hill, 17 Apr. 2025
  • The closings mark the latest contraction of US drug stores in recent years.
    — Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN, 19 Nov. 2021
  • The final nurse, plain face and plain name, studies a tracing of my contractions and tells me when to bear down, when to ease up.
    — Erica Stern june 9, Literary Hub, 9 June 2025
  • That means a powerful hip extension through a strong contraction of the glutes to push the hips open.
    — Cori Ritchey, Men's Health, 1 Sep. 2023
  • This collapsible contraction mimics the squat rack and free weights at the gym.
    — John Thompson, Men's Health, 7 Dec. 2022
  • Pro tip: drive up with your pinky to emphasize the contraction.
    — Brett Williams, Men's Health, 2 June 2022
  • Per the sister Household Survey, about 40% of the growth in jobs was part-time which helps explain the contraction in the workweek.
    — Robert Barone, Forbes, 6 Nov. 2021
  • The bank predicts a 7% GDP contraction for Russia this year.
    — Yvonne Lau, Fortune, 9 Mar. 2022
  • For other Floridians, the past few years have been a slow agony of contraction.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
  • There’s a lot of fear right now, understandably, there’s been a ton of contraction in the business.
    — Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 17 Feb. 2025
  • During that largest episode of contraction, the lake lost as much as one-third of its water and more than two-thirds of its surface area.
    — Sid Perkins, Science | AAAS, 4 June 2021
  • The drop was largely due to a contraction in the services sector, which took a knock after the government ended a tax break for some home buyers.
    — Anna Cooban, CNN Money, 12 June 2025
  • Seeing that expansion and contraction over and over for six episodes (let alone three seasons) can grow tiring, and Season 3 certainly suffers from a sense of exhaustion.
    — Ben Travers, IndieWire, 27 June 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'contraction.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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