DictionaryAI

completion

noun
USkuhm-PLEE-shuhn/kəmˈpliːʃən/

Pluralcompletions (some meanings)

6 meanings of completion

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  1. 1
    noununcountable
    The act or state of finishing something, or of bringing it to its conclusion or accomplishment.

    The completion of the highway was delayed by bad weather.

    Workers received bonuses upon completion of the contract.

    Similarconclusion, finishing, fulfillment, accomplishment, end

    Oppositestart (entry), beginning, commencement, inception

    Note

    The root sense, and the one the others specialize: Latin completio, from complere, "to fill up." Behind the abstract idea of finishing lies a picture of something filled to the brim. It usually takes an of-phrase naming what is finished, as in the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), where a sloop yacht is one "the completion of which had been delayed." It also pairs naturally with on or upon: payment on completion.

  2. 2
    nouncountable
    In American football, a forward pass that the intended receiver catches successfully.

    The receiver made a spectacular completion in the final seconds.

    The team recorded twelve completions in the first half.

    Similarcatch, reception

    Oppositeincompletion

    Note

    A statistic as much as an event. The pass must be legally caught and controlled in bounds by an eligible receiver to count. Because completions are tallied (twelve in a half), the word is freely countable, and the totals feed the passer's rating. A receiver can be said to make a completion, but in the record books it is chiefly the passer's number.

  3. 3
    noununcountable
    In property law, the conclusion of the conveyancing process by which the sale of a property is finalized.

    On completion, the keys were handed over and the buyers took possession.

    The conveyancer confirmed that completion would take place two weeks after exchange of contracts.

    Similarsettlement, closing

    Note

    Conveyancing's last step, the point at which a sale stops being a promise: the balance of the price is paid, legal title passes, and the buyer becomes entitled to possession. It follows exchange of contracts, and lawyers often use it without an article (on completion, before completion) because it names a fixed stage in the process rather than a single act.

  4. 4
    noununcountable
    In computing, a feature that automatically suggests or fills in the remainder of text or a command being typed.

    Code completion in the editor suggested the method name after a few keystrokes.

    She relied on completion to enter long commands without typos.

    Similarautocomplete

    Note

    Prediction from a fragment: given a partial input, the software offers the rest of a word, identifier or command. It draws on a dictionary, on earlier usage or on the program's own symbols. The word usually travels in compounds that name the trigger or the setting, such as tab completion at a command line or code completion in an editor. Autocomplete is its exact synonym.

  5. 5
    noununcountable
    In mathematics, the act of making a metric space complete by adding the points it lacks.

    The completion of the rational numbers gives the real numbers.

    Every metric space has a completion that contains it as a dense subset.

    Note

    Here the Latin "fill up" behind the general sense is almost literal. A space has gaps where Cauchy sequences have nowhere to converge, and the construction adjoins a limit point for each one. The rationals are the classic case: filling their gaps gives the reals. The same word names the resulting space, so "the completion of" can mean either the procedure or what it produces.

  6. 6
    nouncountable
    In mathematics, the complete space that results from adding the missing points to a metric space.

    The real numbers form the completion of the rational numbers.

    Every point in the completion is a limit of points from the original space.

    Note

    Here the word names an object, not a procedure. One says the reals are the completion of the rationals, with a definite article, as of a single space. Inside it every Cauchy sequence converges, and the original space sits as a dense subset, lying close to every newly added point. The building process itself is the act of completing.

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Origin

Borrowed from Latin completio, completionem, from complere ("to fill up, complete"); comparable to English complete plus the suffix -ion.