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say it: TEN-shuhn
tension is a noun meaning "(psychology) a state of mental or emotional strain or suspense". It carries 6 recorded senses.
(psychology) a state of mental or emotional strain or suspense
“he suffered from fatigue and emotional tension”
“stress is a vasoconstrictor”
psychology
the physical condition of being stretched or strained
“it places great tension on the leg muscles”
“he could feel the tenseness of her body”
a balance between and interplay of opposing elements or tendencies (especially in art or literature)
“there is a tension created between narrative time and movie time”
“there is a tension between these approaches to understanding history”
art · literature
(physics) a stress that produces an elongation of an elastic physical body
“the direction of maximum tension moves asymptotically toward the direction of the shear”
physics
feelings of hostility that are not manifest
“he could sense her latent hostility to him”
“the diplomats' first concern was to reduce international tensions”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tension come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.