In the 16th century, Turkish women could divorce their husbands if the man failed to keep his family’s pot filled with coffee.
CONTRACTILITY
contractility
(noun) the capability or quality of shrinking or contracting, especially by muscle fibers and even some other forms of living matter
Source: WordNet® 3.1
Noun
contractility (countable and uncountable, plural contractilities)
The condition of being able to contract or shrink (used especially of muscles).
The extent to which something contracts or shrinks.
(physiology) The performance of cardiac muscle.
Source: Wiktionary
Con`trac*til"i*ty, n.
1. The quality or property by which bodies shrink or contract.
2. (Physiol.)
Definition: The power possessed by the fibers of living muscle of contracting or shortening.
Note: When subject to the will, as in the muscles of locomotion, such power is called voluntary contractility; when not controlled by the will, as in the muscles of the heart, it is involuntary contractility.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
Recent Word Finds
Word of the Day
24 May 2025
EARTHSHAKING
(adjective) sufficiently significant to affect the whole world; “earthshaking proposals”; “the contest was no world-shaking affair”; “the conversation...could hardly be called world-shattering”
Coffee Trivia
