Hypertext Webster Gateway: "construction"

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)

Construction \Con*struc"tion\, n. [L. constructio: cf. F.
construction.]
1. The process or art of constructing; the act of building;
erection; the act of devising and forming; fabrication;
composition.

2. The form or manner of building or putting together the
parts of anything; structure; arrangement.

An astrolabe of peculiar construction. --Whewell.

3. (Gram.) The arrangement and connection of words in a
sentence; syntactical arrangement.

Some particles . . . in certain constructions have
the sense of a whole sentence contained in them.
--Locke.

4. The method of construing, interpreting, or explaining a
declaration or fact; an attributed sense or meaning;
understanding; explanation; interpretation; sense.

Any person . . . might, by the sort of construction
that would be put on this act, become liable to the
penalties of treason. --Hallam.

Strictly, the term [construction] signifies
determining the meaning and proper effect of
language by a consideration of the subject matter
and attendant circumstances in connection with the
words employed. --Abbott.

Interpretation properly precedes construction, but
it does not go beyond the written text. --Parsons.

{Construction of an equation} (Math.), the drawing of such
lines and figures as will represent geometrically the
quantities in the equation, and their relations to each
other.

{Construction train} (Railroad), a train for transporting men
and materials for construction or repairs.

From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)

construction
n 1: the act of constructing or building something; "during the
construction we had to take a detour"; "his hobby was
the building of boats" [syn: {building}]
2: the commercial activity involved in constructing buildings;
"their main business is home construction"; "workers in
the building trades" [syn: {building}]
3: a thing constructed; a complex construction or entity; "the
structure consisted of a series of arches"; "she wore her
hair in an amazing construction of whirls and ribbons"
[syn: {structure}]
4: a group of words that form a constituent of a sentence and
are considered as a single unit; "I concluded from his
awkward constructions that he was a foreigner" [syn: {grammatical
construction}, {expression}] [ant: {misconstruction}]
5: the creation of a construct; the process of combining ideas
into a congruous object of thought [syn: {mental synthesis}]
6: an interpretation of a text or action; "they put an
unsympathetic construction on his conduct" [syn: {twist}]
7: drawing a figure satisfying certain conditions as part of
solving a problem or proving a theorem; "the assignment
was to make a construction that could be used in proving
the Pythagorean theorem"


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