Meaning & use

compression

noun·Academic

The act or process of pressing something into a smaller space, or reducing the size of data.

See it in a sentence

The engineer explained how compression of the gas increases both its pressure and temperature.

File compression allowed the team to send the large video over email.

A note on using this word

In computing, compression can be lossless, preserving all original data, or lossy, discarding some detail to save space.

Words with a similar meaning

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Words with an opposite meaning

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