From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Construction \Con*struc"tion\, noun [L. constructio: cf. F. construction.]
1. The process or art of constructing; the act of building; erection; the act of devising and forming; fabrication; composition.
2. The form or manner of building or putting together the parts of anything; structure; arrangement.
An astrolabe of peculiar construction. --Whewell.
3. (Gram.) The arrangement and connection of words in a sentence; syntactical arrangement.
Some particles . . . in certain constructions have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them. --Locke.
4. The method of construing, interpreting, or explaining a declaration or fact; an attributed sense or meaning; understanding; explanation; interpretation; sense.
Any person . . . might, by the sort of construction that would be put on this act, become liable to the penalties of treason. --Hallam.
Strictly, the term [construction] signifies determining the meaning and proper effect of language by a consideration of the subject matter and attendant circumstances in connection with the words employed. --Abbott.
Interpretation properly precedes construction, but it does not go beyond the written text. --Parsons.
{Construction of an equation} (Math.), the drawing of such lines and figures as will represent geometrically the quantities in the equation, and their relations to each other.
{Construction train} (Railroad), a train for transporting men and materials for construction or repairs.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: the act of constructing or building something; "during the construction we had to take a detour"; "his hobby was the building of boats" [syn: {building}]
2: the commercial activity involved in constructing buildings; "their main business is home construction"; "workers in the building trades" [syn: {building}]
3: a thing constructed; a complex construction or entity; "the structure consisted of a series of arches"; "she wore her hair in an amazing construction of whirls and ribbons" [syn: {structure}]
4: a group of words that form a constituent of a sentence and are considered as a single unit; "I concluded from his awkward constructions that he was a foreigner" [syn: {grammatical construction}, {expression}] [ant: {misconstruction}]
5: the creation of a construct; the process of combining ideas into a congruous object of thought [syn: {mental synthesis}]
6: an interpretation of a text or action; "they put an unsympathetic construction on his conduct" [syn: {twist}]
7: drawing a figure satisfying certain conditions as part of solving a problem or proving a theorem; "the assignment was to make a construction that could be used in proving the Pythagorean theorem"
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
152 Moby Thesaurus words for "construction": acronym, acrostic, adjectival phrase, anatomy, architectonics, architecture, arrangement, assemblage, assembly, avyayibhava, back formation, build, building, buildup, casting, clause, clipped word, combination, composition, compound, conformation, conjugate, constitution, construct, conversion, crafting, craftsmanship, creation, cultivation, definition, description, design, devising, diagnosis, dvandva, dvigu, edifice, elaboration, embodiment, endocentric compound, erection, establishment, exegesis, exocentric compound, explanation, explication, expose, exposition, expression, extraction, fabric, fabrication, fashion, fashioning, forging, form, format, formation, forming, formulation, frame, framing, getup, growing, handicraft, handiwork, harvesting, headed group, house, idiom, idiotism, incorporation, interpretation, junction, locution, machining, make, makeup, making, manner of speaking, manufacture, manufacturing, meaning, milling, mining, mixture, mold, molding, noun phrase, organic structure, organism, organization, packaged house, paragraph, paronym, pattern, patterning, peculiar expression, period, phrasal idiom, phrase, physique, piecing together, pile, plan, prefab, prefabrication, preparation, processing, producing, production, putting together, pyramid, raising, reading, refining, sentence, set phrase, setup, shape, shaping, skyscraper, smelting, spoonerism, standard phrase, structure, structuring, superstructure, syneresis, syntactic structure, synthesis, tatpurusha, tectonics, term, texture, tissue, tower, turn of expression, turn of phrase, usage, utterance, verb complex, verb phrase, verbalism, warp and woof, way of seeing, way of speaking, weave, web, word form, word-group, workmanship
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