suspension

plural suspensions

1. countableuncountableThe act of suspending, or the state of being suspended.

   suspension from a hook

2. countableuncountableA temporary or conditional delay, interruption or discontinuation.

   Fear of dioxin emissions led to suspension of efforts to establish a waste-to-energy plant at the Brooklyn Navy yard.

   1983 September, “Recycled Materials Program in Response to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act”, in Harvey Yakowitz, editor, The National Bureau of Standards Office of Recycled Materials, 1976–1982 (NBS Special Publication; 662), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 52

   Synonyms: halt

3. countableuncountablechemistryThe state of a solid or substance produced when its particles are mixed with, but not dissolved in, a fluid, and are capable of separation by straining.

   As the solids clump together, they get heavier causing them to fall out of suspension in the water.

   2011 August 8, M. W. Hubbell, “Chemistry”, in The Fundamentals of Nuclear Power Generation: Questions and Answers, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 216

4. countableuncountableThus a kind of silt or sludge.
5. countableuncountableThe act of keeping a person who is listening in doubt and expectation of what is to follow.
6. countableuncountableThe temporary barring of a person from a workplace, society, etc. pending investigation into alleged misconduct.
7. countableuncountableeducationThe process of barring a student from school grounds as a form of punishment (particularly out-of-school suspension).

   suspension from school as a disciplinary measure

   1 more example

   […] Donna Thomas, John Tiedeman, David Jones, and Richard Williams, all students in the Granville Junior-Senior High School, conceived a plan in November 1978 to produce a satirical publication addressed to the school community. […] [Assistant Principal Frederick] Reed summoned Tiedeman and discussed with him the “dangers” of publishing material that might offend or hurt others. Specifically, he told Tiedeman that a similar publication several years before had culminated in the suspension of the students involved.

   1979, Irving R[obert] Kaufman, Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, “Thomas v. Board of Education”, in The Federal Reporter. Second Series. Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and District Courts of the United States and the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, with Key-number Annotations, volume 607, St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 1045; reprinted in Michael Imber; Tyll van Geel, “Student Freedom of Expression”, in Education Law, 4th edition, New York, N.Y.; Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2010, page 158

8. countableuncountableentertainmentThe act of or discord produced by prolonging one or more tones of a chord into the chord which follows, thus producing a momentary discord, suspending the concord which the ear expects.

   As in Sequenza IV, the suspension of the chord creates several different layers of activity, which can be understood by looking at the right hand’s chord in bar two.

   2007, Zoe Browder Doll, “Phantom Rhythms, Hidden Harmonies: The Use of the Sostenuto Pedal in Berio’s Sequenza IV for Piano, Leaf and Sonata”, in Janet K. Halfyard, editor, Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis, Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, →ISBN, page 62

9. countableuncountableScots lawA stay or postponement of the execution of a sentence, usually by letters of suspension granted on application to the Lord Ordinary.
10. countableuncountablemathematicsA topological space derived from another by taking the product of the original space with an interval and collapsing each end of the product to a point.

    1 more example

    To get an intuitive feeling for the characteristics of H'-spaces, it is instructive to consider an important class of such spaces, the suspensions. The suspension of an arbitrary topological space Y is defined to be the quotient space of Y#92;timesI where Y#92;times 0 is identified to one point and Y#92;times 1 is identified to another point. For example, the suspension of a circle is a cylinder with the two ends collapsed into one point each; in other words, a space homeomorphic to a sphere.

    2012, H. Rasmussen, “Strategy-proofness of Continuous Aggregation Maps”, in Geoffrey M. Heal, editor, Topological Social Choice: With 45 Figures (Social Choice and Welfare; vol. 14, no. 2, 1997), Berlin: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, page 110

11. countableuncountablemathematicsA function derived, in a standard way, from another, such that the instant function’s domain and codomain are suspensions of the original function’s.

    1 more example

    A model category is called pointed if the initial object and terminal object are the same. The homotopy category of any pointed model category acquires a suspension functor denoted by #92;Sigma. It turns out that #92;text#123;Ho#125;(M) is a pre-triangulated category in a natural way[…]. When the suspension is an equivalence, M is called a stable model category, and in this case #92;text#123;Ho#125;(M) becomes a triangulated category[…].

    2010, Paul Arne Østvær, “Preliminaries”, in Homotopy Theory of C*-Algebras (Frontiers in Mathematics), Basel: Birkhäuser, Springer Basel, →DOI, →ISBN, page 17

12. countableuncountabletransportThe system of springs and shock absorbers connected to the wheels in an automobile, which allows the vehicle to move smoothly with reduced shock to its occupants.

    If you drive over a speed bump, the left and right tires push the suspension upward at the same time.

    2011, Chuck Edmondson, “Steering and Suspension”, in Fast Car Physics, Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 151