Decompression

2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  decompression \decompression\ n.
     1. the process of experiencing {decompression}; the act or
        process of relieving or reducing pressure.
  
     Syn: decompressing.
          [WordNet 1.5 +PJC]


  
     2. the reduction of atmospheric pressure experienced by
        divers rising from deep water to the surface, thus
        reducing the concentration of dissolved atmospheric gases
        in the blood; -- especially applied to a gradual reduction
        of such pressure.
        [PJC]
  
     3. the process, analogous to sense 2, undergone by divers in
        a decompression chamber, in which an artificially high
        atmospheric pressure is gradually lowered to normal
        pressure.
        [PJC]
  
     4. a return to a normal, more relaxed state after a period of
        intense stress, psychological pressure, or urgent
        activity; -- of people.
        [PJC]
  
     5. (Computers) the process of converting digitally encoded
        data from a more compact (compressed) form to its
        original, larger size.
  
     Note: The process of compression and decompression may
           completely recover all of the original data (called
           lossless compression), or may lose some of the original
           data in order to achieve higher degress of compression
           (lossy compression). The latter is used especially with
           images or video data, which may be of very large size
           relative to text, and for which small changes may be
           imperceptible to the human eye. The {JPEG} data
           compression format is a lossy format.
           [PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  decompression
       n 1: restoring compressed information to its normal form for use
            or display [ant: {compression}]
       2: relieving pressure [syn: {decompressing}] [ant: {compression}]