English

Verb

contain ‎(third-person singular simple present contains, present participle containing, simple past and past participle contained)

1. (transitive) To hold inside.
   • 1893, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate, chapter III:

     At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. […] In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass.

   • 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

     [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, […].

2. (transitive) To include as a part.
   • 2014 April 21, “Subtle effects”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8884:

     Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.

3. (transitive) To put constraint upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds.

   I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself!‎

   • Edmund Spenser (c.1552–1599)

     The king's person contains the unruly people from evil occasions.

   • William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

     Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves.

   • 1893, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate, Prologue:

     Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn.

4. (mathematics, of a set etc., transitive) To have as an element or subset.

   A group contains a unique inverse for each of its elements.‎

   If that subgraph contains the vertex in question then it must be spanning.‎

5. (obsolete, intransitive) To restrain desire; to live in continence or chastity.
   • Bible, 1 Corinthians vii. 9.

     But if they can not contain, let them marry.

Synonyms

• (hold inside): enclose, inhold
• (include as part): comprise, embody, incorporate, inhold
• (limit by restraint): control, curb, repress, restrain, restrict, stifle

Antonyms

• (include as part): exclude, omit
• (limit by restraint): release, vent

Related terms

• container
• containable
• containment
• content
• continence

Translations

Anagrams

• actinon