Word.ws English Dictionary

contractional

contractional adjective: of or related to contraction.

Adjective

contractional (not comparable)

  1. of or related to contraction
    • Removal of SCLM can be accomplished by thermal erosion associated with a rising plume head, by extensional thinning of the lithosphere (and associated mantle upwelling), or by processes related to contractional tectonics [e.g., foundering of lithosphere during thickening, peeling of lithosphere...2000 September 15, Cin-Ty Lee et al., “Osmium Isotopic Evidence for Mesozoic Removal of Lithospheric Mantle Beneath the Sierra Nevada, California”, in Science, volume 289, number 5486, →DOI, pages...
    • Bars show principal horizontal stresses; black bars correspond to contractional stress and white bars to extensional stress.1997 October 24, Philip England, Peter Molnar, “Active Deformation of Asia: From Kinematics to Dynamics”, in Science, volume 278, number 5338, →DOI, pages 647–650

Origin of contractional

From contraction + -al.

Questions about contractional

What does contractional mean?
Contractional means of or related to contraction.
What part of speech is contractional?
Contractional is an adjective.

Words near contractional in the dictionary

  1. contracting
  2. contracting out
  3. contracting out of
  4. contractings
  5. contraction
  6. contractional
  7. contractionary
  8. contractionless
  9. contractions
  10. contractive
  11. contractivities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contractional (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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