Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Capable of contracting or causing contraction.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Susceptible of contraction; having the property of contracting or shrinking into a smaller compass or length: as, contractile muscles or fibers. Producing contraction; capable of shortening or making smaller.
- Specifically In entomology, capable of being doubled in close to the lower surface of the thorax, and fitting into grooves so as to be hardly distinguishable from the general surface: said of the legs, etc., of insects.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective tending to contract; having the power or property of contracting, or of shrinking into shorter or smaller dimensions.
- adjective (Zoöl.) a pulsating cavity in the interior of a protozoan, supposed to be excretory in function. There may be one, two, or more.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Capable of
contracting , or of beingcontracted .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective capable of contracting or being contracted
Etymologies
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Examples
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The protoplasm is more or less extensively excavated by fluid spaces, vacuoles; one clearer circular space or vacuole, which is invariably present, appears at intervals, enlarges gradually, and then vanishes abruptly, to reappear after a brief interval; this is called the contractile vacuole (c.v.).
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The euglenas main way of transporting itself is by swimming, the flagellum is mad up of of four part known as contractile fibrils, it uses these four fibrils to bend back and forth moving the creature along.
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The euglenas main way of transporting itself is by swimming, the flagellum is mad up of of four part known as contractile fibrils, it uses these four fibrils to bend back and forth moving the creature to wherever it needs to go.
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The euglenas main way of transporting itself is by swimming, the flagellum is mad up of of four part known as contractile fibrils, it uses these four fibrils to bend back and forth moving the creature along.
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The authors describe how the romantic poets saw the heart's beating as the "fountain of life" and note how Harvey's famous book on the heart emphasized in its very title, "De Motu Cordis," the contractile motions that are a key to its function.
Matters Of the Heart Paul McHugh 2011
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"If you just find a way to rev up those contractile fibers for the muscle, then everything else from human biology and gait would allow us to be that fast," said physiologist Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University, lead author of a study published Jan. 21 in the
Wired Top Stories 2010
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The theory of evolution offers a framework for understanding how terrestrial life has evolved sensory mechanisms for transducing various types of energy from the environment, such as light, heat, and mechanical energy, into electrical and chemical signals that ultimately guide physical behavior by, to summarize tersely, impacting on contractile elements in cells that, consuming chemical energy ultiamtely derived from solar energy, produce mechanical energy that results in motor movement.
"War of the Weasels" article in new Skeptical Inquirer - The Panda's Thumb 2010
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Think of actin and myosin, the contractile proteins.
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Oster and his colleagues tried the experiment, on their computer model, of lowering the ‘firing threshold’ of the contractile filaments.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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Rather than allowing the one contractile filament in their model to contract at will, they built into it a property which is common in certain kinds of muscle fibre: when stretched beyond a certain critical length, the fibre would respond by contracting to a much shorter length than the normal equilibrium length.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009
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