contain

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French contenir, from Latin continere (“to hold or keep together, comprise, contain”), combined form of con- (“together”) + teneō (“to hold”).

• enPR: kən-tānʹ, IPA^(key): /kənˈteɪn/

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• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Hyphenation: con‧tain

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

1. (transitive) To hold inside.
   • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:

     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!

   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

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

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619, page 16:

     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.

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

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

• container
• containable
• containment
• content
• continence

• contain in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• contain in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• contain at OneLook Dictionary Search

• actinon, cantion