Etimology
From Middle English, borrowed from Old French contenir, from Latin continēre (“to hold or keep together, comprise, contain”), combined form of con- (“together”) + teneō (“to hold”).
verb
contain (third-person singular simple present contains, present participle containing, simple past and past participle contained)
(transitive) To hold inside.
(transitive) To include as a part.
(transitive) To put constraints upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds.
(mathematics, of a set etc., transitive) To have as an element or subset.
(obsolete, intransitive) To restrain desire; to live in continence or chastity.
Examples
The brown box contains three stacks of books.
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, […].
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.
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.
There she goes / There she goes again / Racing through my brain / And I just can't contain / This feeling that remains
A group contains a unique inverse for each of its elements.
If that subgraph contains the vertex in question then it must be spanning.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry.
Related words
synonyms
(hold inside): enclose, inhold
(include as part): comprise, embody, incorporate, inhold
(limit by restraint): control, curb, repress, restrain, restrict, stifle; See also Thesaurus:curb
antonyms
(antonym(s) of "include as part"): exclude, omit
(antonym(s) of "limit by restraint"): release, vent
related terms
container
containable
containment
content
continence