from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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]