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selling their labor (to be performed inside the prison) at a fixed price per day to contractors who are allowed to have agents in the prison to superintend the work.

A clay tablet on which was inscribed a contract, for safe keeping. Such tablets were inclosed in an outer case (often called the envelope), on which was inscribed a duplicate of the inscription on the inclosed tablet.

Drawn together; shrunken; wrinkled; narrow; as, a contracted brow; a contracted noun.

The state of being contracted; narrowness; meannes; selfishness.

Capability of being contracted; quality of being contractible; as, the contractibiliy and dilatability of air. Arbuthnot.

Capable of contraction. Small air bladders distable and contractible. Arbuthnot.

Contractibility.

tending to contract; having the power or property of contracting, or of shrinking into shorter or smaller dimensions; as, the contractile tissues. The heart's contractile force. H. Brooke. Each cilium seems to be composed of contractile substance. Hixley. Contractile vacuole (Zoöl.), a pulsating cavity in the interior…

The quality or property by which bodies shrink or contract.

The act or process of contracting, shortening, or shrinking; the state of being contracted; as, contraction of the heart, of the pupil of the eye, or of a tendion; the contraction produced by cold.

Tending to contract; having the property or power or power of contracting.

One who contracts; one of the parties to a bargain; one who covenants to do anything for another; specifically, one who contracts to perform work on a rather large scale, at a certain price or rate, as in building houses or making a railroad.

A state of permanent rigidity or contraction of the muscles, generally of the flexor muscles.

To act in opposition to; to hinder, defeat, or frustrate, by contrary agency or influence; as, to counteract the effect of medicines; to counteract good advice.

Action in opposition; hindrance resistance. [They] do not . . . overcome the counteraction of a false principle or of stubborn partiality. Johnson.

Tending to counteract.

By counteraction.

from the similarity of its arrangement to that of the joints of a finger. [Written also dactyle.]

Pertaining to dactyl; dactylic.

A dactyl. [Obs.]