Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or process of decompressing.
  • noun A surgical procedure used to relieve pressure on an organ or part, such as the abdomen, cranium, or spinal cord.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Relief from pressure; specifically, relief from excessive atmospheric or hydrostatic pressure.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun the process of experiencing decompression; the act or process of relieving or reducing pressure.
  • noun the reduction of atmospheric pressure experienced by divers rising from deep water to the surface, thus reducing the concentration of dissolved atmospheric gases in the blood; -- especially applied to a gradual reduction of such pressure.
  • noun the process, analogous to sense 2, undergone by divers in a decompression chamber, in which an artificially high atmospheric pressure is gradually lowered to normal pressure.
  • noun a return to a normal, more relaxed state after a period of intense stress, psychological pressure, or urgent activity; -- of people.
  • noun (Computers) the process of converting digitally encoded data from a more compact (compressed) form to its original, larger size.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The process of decompressing.
  • noun The restoration to atmospheric pressure of a person who has spent time under higher pressure (such as a diver)
  • noun medicine The relief of pressure on a body part by surgery

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun restoring compressed information to its normal form for use or display
  • noun relieving pressure (especially bringing a compressed person gradually back to atmospheric pressure)

Etymologies

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