[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

compression \compres"sion\, n. l. compressio: cf. f.
   compression.
   1. the act of compressing, or state of being compressed.
      "compression of thought." --johnson.
      1913 webster

   2. computers reduction of the space required for storage
      of binary data by an algorithm which converts the data
      to a smaller number of bits while preserving the
      information content. the act of compressing 3.

   note: compression may be lossless compression, in which all
         of the information in the original data is preserved,
         and the original data may be recovered in form
         identical to its original form; or lossy compression,
         in which some of the information in the original data
         is lost, and decompression results in a data form
         slightly different from the original. lossy
         compression is used, for example, to compress audio or
         video recordings, and sometimes images, where the
         slight differences in the original data and the data
         recovered after lossy compression may be
         imperceptable to the human eye or ear. the jpeg
         format is produced by a lossy compression algorithm.
         pjc
see also:
lossless compression lossy compression lossy compression jpeg 

[2] : WordNet (r) 2.0

compression
     n 1: an increase in the density of something syn: compaction,
          concretion, densification
     2: the process or result of becoming smaller or pressed
        together; "the contraction of a gas on cooling" syn: condensation,
         contraction
     3: encoding information while reducing the bandwidth or bits
        required ant: decompression
     4: applying pressure syn: compressing ant: decompression
see also:
compaction concretion densification condensation contraction decompression 
compressing 

[3] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

74 moby thesaurus words for "compression":
   abbreviation, abridgment, abstract, agglutination, apocope,
   astriction, astringency, bottleneck, cervix, circumscription,
   clamping, clamping down, clumping, clustering, coarctation,
   compactedness, compaction, compressure, concentration, concretion,
   condensation, consolidation, conspectus, constriction,
   constringency, contraction, contracture, crush, curtailment,
   decrease, densification, diminuendo, elision, ellipsis, epitome,
   foreshortening, hardening, hourglass, hourglass figure, isthmus,
   knitting, narrow place, narrowing, neck, nip, pinch, precis, press,
   pressure, puckering, pursing, recap, recapitulation, reduction,
   retrenchment, shortening, solidification, squeeze, squeezing,
   stranglement, strangulation, striction, stricture, summary,
   summation, syncope, synopsis, systole, telescoping, tightening,
   truncation, tweak, wasp waist, wrinkling

[4] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

compression
     
        1.  or "compaction" the coding of data to save
        storage space or transmission time.  although data is already
        coded in digital form for computer processing, it can often be
        coded more efficiently using fewer bits.  for example,
        run-length encoding replaces strings of repeated characters
        or other units of data with a single character and a count.
        there are many compression algorithms and utilities.
        compressed data must be decompressed before it can be used.
     
        the standard unix compression utilty is called compress
        though gnu's superior gzip has largely replaced it.  other
        compression utilties include pack, zip and pkzip.
     
        when compressing several similar files, it is usually better
        to join the files together into an archive of some kind
        using tar for example and then compress them, rather than
        to join together individually compressed files.  this is
        because some common compression algorithms build up tables
        based on the data from their current input which they have
        already compressed.  they then use this table to compress
        subsequent data more efficiently.
     
        see also tiff, jpeg, mpeg, lempel-ziv welch,
        "lossy", "lossless".
     
        compression faq
        ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/compression-faq/.
     
        usenet newsgroups: news:comp.compression,
        news:comp.compression.research.
     
        2.  reducing the dynamic range of an audio signal,
        making quiet sounds louder and loud sounds quieter.  thus,
        when discussing digital audio, the preferred term for reducing
        the total amount of data is "compaction".  some advocate this
        term in all contexts.
     
        2001-01-30
     
     
see also:
run-length encoding algorithms unix compress gnu gzip 
pack zip pkzip archive tar 
algorithm tiff jpeg mpeg lempel-ziv welch 
lossy lossless lt;compression faqgt; usenet lt;news:comp.compressiongt; lt;news:comp.compression.researchgt; 

Compression >> C Words
Compression, definition of term: Compression
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