compress - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English compressen, from Old French compresser, from Late Latin compressare (“to press hard/together”), from Latin compressus, the past participle of comprimō (“to compress”), itself from com- (“together”) + premō (“press”).

compress (third-person singular simple present compresses, present participle compressing, simple past and past participle compressed)

  1. (transitive) To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume.
    Synonyms: compact, condense, pack, press, squash, squeeze; see also Thesaurus:compress
    Antonym: expand
    The force required to compress a spring varies linearly with the displacement.
    • 1825 June 17, Daniel Webster, Speech on the laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument:
      events of centuries […] compressed within the compass of a single life
    • 1810, William Melmoth, transl., Letters of Pliny:
      The same strength of expression, though more compressed, runs through his historical harangues.
  2. (intransitive) To be pressed together or folded by compression into a more economic, easier format.
    Synonym: contract
    Antonym: decontract
    Our new model compresses easily, ideal for storage and travel
  3. (transitive) To condense into a more economic, easier format.
    This chart compresses the entire audit report into a few lines on a single diagram.
  4. (transitive) To abridge.
    Synonyms: abridge, condense, shorten, truncate; see also Thesaurus:shorten
    Antonyms: expand, lengthen
    If you try to compress the entire book into a three-sentence summary, you will lose a lot of information.
  5. (computing, transitive) To make digital information smaller by encoding it using fewer bits.
    Synonym: zip
    Antonyms: uncompress, decompress, unzip
    • 2015, Vince Buffalo, Bioinformatics Data Skills […] , O'Reilly, →ISBN:
      The command-line tool gzip allows you to compress files in a few different ways. First, gzip can compress results from standard input.
  6. (physics, transitive) To make a pulse or particle bunch shorter by applying dispersion to it.
    Antonym: stretch
    • 2019, B. Webb et al., “Simulation of grating compressor misalignment tolerances and mitigation strategies for chirped-pulse–amplification systems of varying bandwidths and beam sizes”, in Applied Optics, volume 58, number 2, pages 234-243:
      Diffraction gratings are by far the most common elements used to stretch and compress pulses because of their substantial angular dispersion, […]
  7. (obsolete) To embrace sexually.
    • 1717, Alexander Pope, “The Fable of Dryope. From the Ninth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”, in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, […], →OCLC, page 295:
      This nymph compreſs'd by him vvho rules the day, / VVhom Delphi and the Delian iſle obey, / Andræmon lov'd; and, bleſs'd in all thoſe charms / That pleas'd a God, ſucceeded to her arms.

to press together into a smaller space

to be pressed together

to condense

Translations to be checked

From Middle French compresse, from compresse (“to compress”), from Late Latin compressare (“to press hard/together”), from Latin compressus, the past participle of comprimō (“to compress”), itself from com- (“together”) + premō (“press”).

compress (plural compresses)

  1. (medicine) A multiply folded piece of cloth, a pouch of ice, etc., used to apply to a patient's skin, cover the dressing of wounds, and placed with the aid of a bandage to apply pressure on an injury.
    He held a cold compress over the sprain.
  2. A machine for compressing.

cloth used to dress or apply pressure to wounds