expansion
noun/ɪkˈspænʃən/
Etymology Borrowed from French expansion, from Latin expānsiō. By surface analysis, expand + -sion.
12 senses
- 1An act, process, or instance of expanding.
- 2The fractional change in unit length per unit length per…
- 3A new addition.
- 4A product to be used with a previous product.
- 5That which is expanded; expanse; extended surface.
- 6The operation of steam in a cylinder after its…
- 7The replacement of a short name (e.g., acronym…
- 8The string of text thus substituted.
- 9Ellipsis of expansion pack.
- 10An increase in the market value of an economy over time.
- 11Stretching of geometric objects with flat sides.
- 12The rewriting of an expression as a longer but…
An act, process, or instance of expanding.
- The expansion of metals and plastics in response to heat is well understood.
- […] 1919, a time when African American hopes for a just future following their service in World War I were dashed by violent reassertions of white supremacy, including the efflorescence and expansion of the KKK into the Midwestern and northwestern U.S.2015, Heidi Nast, “Pit Bulls, Slavery, and Whiteness in the Mid- to Late-Nineteenth-Century U.S.”, in Rosemary-Claire Collard, Kathryn Gillespie, editors, Critical Animal Geographies, page 138:
The fractional change in unit length per unit length per unit temperature change.
- Look up the expansion of 1018 steel at stick welding temps and figure out how far this thing's gonna bend once we weld it up.
A new addition.
- My new office is in the expansion behind the main building.
A product to be used with a previous product.
- This expansion requires the original game board.
That which is expanded; expanse; extended surface.
- Mother of mighty Rome's imperial line, / Delight of man, and of the powers divine, / Venus, all-bounteous queen! whose genial power / Diffuses beauty in unbounded store / Through seas, and fertile plains, and all that lies / Beneath the starred expansion of the skies.a. 1804, James Beattie, “The Beginning of the First Book of Lucretius”, in The Poetical Works of James Beattie (The Aldine Edition of the British Poets), London: Bell and Daldy […], published 1866, →OCLC, pages 170–171:
The operation of steam in a cylinder after its communication with the boiler has been cut off, by which it continues to exert pressure upon the moving piston.
The replacement of a short name (e.g., acronym, initialism, alphanumeric symbol, abbreviation) with the longer name that is synonymous with it, as when spelling out acronyms to ensure clarity for a general audience.
- Expansion of acronyms is often helpful for nonexpert readers (anacronyms excluded).
› An act, process, or instance of expanding. › The replacement of a short name (e.g.…
The string of text thus substituted.
- The acronym "FNDs" can mean either "functional neurologic disorders" or "focal neurologic deficits", so you'd better use the expansion instead of the acronym, for clarity in this context; readers of this paragraph may not have read, or remember, which definition you used 40 pages earlier.
› An act, process, or instance of expanding.
Video games Abbreviation, Ellipsis Ellipsis of expansion pack.
Economics, Sciences An increase in the market value of an economy over time.
- Secondly, the cyclical expansion now taking shape in the United States is starting from a relatively high level; it has much less headroom than earlier expansions that began from a deeply deflated recession base.1971, National Industrial Conference Board, The Conference Board Record - Volume 8, page 4:
- In addition, new technologies are adopted which are less labour-using, thus unemploying workers. Over the postwar years, factors of this sort have contributed to a gradual upward drift in unemployment rates, even during expansions.1978, Fred Caloren, Michel Chossudovsky, Paul Gingrich, Is the Canadian Economy Closing Down?, Black Rose Books Ltd., →ISBN, page 88:
Geometry, Mathematics, Sciences Stretching of geometric objects with flat sides.
Algebra, Mathematics, Sciences The rewriting of an expression as a longer but equivalent sum of terms.
- Antonyms
- contraction, shrinkage
- Derived terms
40 terms
alloexpansion, antiexpansion, coefficient of thermal expansion, coexpansion, cofactor expansion, compansion, ego-expansion, expansin, expansion adapter, expansional, expansionary, expansion card, expansion cleat, expansion club, expansion cooling, expansionism, expansionist, expansion joint, expansionless, expansion pack, expansion set, expansion slot, expansion tank, expansion team, expansion turbine, expansion vessel, hyperexpansion, in-line expansion, Joule-Thomson expansion, Laplace expansion, macro expansion, microexpansion, multiple expansion, nonexpansion, overexpansion, postexpansion, reexpansion, Sudakov expansion, Taylor expansion, underexpansion