contain

verb

1. 1

   To hold inside.

   The brown box contains three stacks of books.

   a spray bottle containing water.

   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.

   [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. 2

   To include as a part.

   Most of the meals they offer contain meat.

   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. 3

   To put constraints upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds.

   I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself!

   Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves.

   [The king's] only Person is oftentimes instead of an Army, to contain the unruly People from a thousand evil Occasions.

   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. 4

   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. 5

   obsoleteTo restrain desire; to live in continence or chastity.

   But if they cannot contain, let them marry.

Forms

past tense

contained

past participle

contained

present participle

containing

third person singular

contains