CONTRACTILITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Contractility

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Contractility n.

The quality or property by which bodies shrink or contract.

(Physiol.) 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.

See images of 'Contractility'

Etymology of 'Contractility'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Contractility" Quotes from Famous Books

... consider them invalidated by Dr. Lionel Beale's recent researches), tending to show that each elementary fibre is supplied with nerves; and as to the smooth muscular fibres, we have Virchow's statement respecting the contractility of those of the umbilical cord, where there is not a ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

Words linked to "Contractility" : astringency, ability