Definitions

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

  • adjective Pressed together or into less volume or space.
  • adjective Biology Flattened, especially laterally or lengthwise, as certain leafstalks or the bodies of many fishes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pressed into narrow compass; condensed; especially, flattened laterally or lengthwise; having the two opposite sides flattened or plane.

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

  • adjective Pressed together; compacted; reduced in volume by pressure.
  • adjective (Bot.) Flattened lengthwise.
  • adjective an engine operated by the elastic force of compressed air.

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

  • adjective Pressed tightly together.
  • adjective Flattened, especially when along its entire length.
  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of compress.

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

  • adjective pressed tightly together
  • adjective flattened laterally along the whole length (e.g., certain leafstalks or flatfishes)
  • adjective reduced in volume by pressure

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "Spunnels" in the public's jargon, came into being, the term compressed from the phrase "hyperspace tunnels," a universal phenomenon once suspected and eventually confirmed.

    The Universe — or Nothing Meyer Moldeven

  • The other lab-experiment dessert utilizes what they call compressed fruit, which to me looks like cantaloupe and honeydew cubes with cold melon soup and a few flowers in a cool asymmetrical bowl.

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed 2010

  • The cartridge can also transfer the data at a high speed of 72 MB/s in compressed mode.

    Generation Tapes | SciFi, Fantasy & Horror Collectibles 2009

  • (Yes, air often is acquired and used without involving commerce, but it is sometimes bought and sold, especially in compressed form.)

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Drawing Lines in the Commerce Clause Debate on Health Care Reform 2010

  • A long time ago I was thinking about compression methods and had thoughts along the same lines, trying to consider at what point it became more practical to assign everything a reference number rather than storing the image itself in compressed form.

    Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Pondering Images 2010

  • It was also notable for lasting 11 seasons while the Korean War lasted less than 3 years, so the passage of time on the show was heavily compressed from the "one week per episode" formula you usually see.

    Some Thoughts on the Evolution of the Medical TV Show trinfaneb 2008

  • Seattle Bon Vivant recommends Le Palais des Thés green teas (packaged, in compressed tea blocks or loose in beautiful pots).

    My Paris 2007

  • Each breast is essentially a heavy-duty balloon with a built in compressed air cartridge.

    - Boing Boing 2007

  • [GridIron] published test results indicate that a 60 second NTSC broadcast was compressed from a raw file size of 923 Mbytes to an MPEG4 encoded file of 13 Mbytes — a 98.75% reduction in size.

    Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Video Encoding Via Grid Computing 2003

  • Eagle Base has five smaller outposts, which offer much the same view in compressed form.

    Peace is Hell 2001

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