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compress

/kəmˈpɹɛs/verb, noun

compress is spelled C-O-M-P-R-E-S-S: 8 letters and 2 syllables. It appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 26,420th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a verb, compress means “To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).

How many letters and syllables are in compress?

Letters8: C-O-M-P-R-E-S-S
Syllables2 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1.2 times per million words; the 26,420th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How common is compress?

Compress appears 1.2 times per million words in written English, the 26,420th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce compress?

  • /kəmˈpɹɛs/

As a noun (“A multiply folded piece of cloth, a pouch of ice, etc.…”): /ˈkɒmpɹɛs/, /ˈkɑmpɹɛs/.

Compress has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-compress-verb.ogg, En-us-compress-noun.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of compress

  • compresses present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • compressing participle, present
  • compressed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does compress mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume.

    The force required to compress a spring varies linearly with the displacement.

  2. 2

    To be pressed together or folded by compression into a more economic, easier format.

    Our new model compresses easily, ideal for storage and travel

  3. 3

    To condense into a more economic, easier format.

    This chart compresses the entire audit report into a few lines on a single diagram.

  4. 4

    To abridge.

    If you try to compress the entire book into a three-sentence summary, you will lose a lot of information.

  5. 5

    To make digital information smaller by encoding it using fewer bits.

  6. 6

    To make a pulse or particle bunch shorter by applying dispersion to it.

  7. 7

    obsoleteTo embrace sexually.

noun

  1. 1

    A multiply folded piece of cloth, a pouch of ice, etc., used to apply to a patient's skin, cover the dressing of wounds, and placed with the aid of a bandage to apply pressure on an injury.

    He held a cold compress over the sprain.

  2. 2

    A machine for compressing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate compress?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of compress: ICE.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Compress in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchcomprimer (to press together into a smaller space), compresser (to encode digital information into less bits), compresse (cloth used to dress or apply pressure to wounds)
Germankomprimieren (to press together into a smaller space), Kompresse (cloth used to dress or apply pressure to wounds)
Portuguesecomprimir (to press together into a smaller space), compressa (cloth used to dress or apply pressure to wounds)
Spanishcomprimir (to press together into a smaller space), compresa (cloth used to dress or apply pressure to wounds), comprimirse (to be pressed together)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does compress come from?

From Middle English compressen, from Old French compresser, from Late Latin compressare (“to press hard/together”), from Latin compressus, the past participle of comprimō (“to compress”), itself from com- (“together”) + premō (“press”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after compress