The Collaborative International Dictionary
Subduction \Sub*duc"tion\, n. [L. subductio.]
The act of subducting or taking away.
--Bp. Hall.Arithmetical subtraction.
--Sir M. Hale.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
early 15c., "withdrawal, removal" (originally of noxious substances from the body), from Latin subductionem (nominative subductio) "a withdrawal, drawing up, hauling ashore," noun of action from past participle stem of subducere "to draw away, take away" (see subduce). Geological sense is attested from 1970, from French (1951).
Wiktionary
n. 1 The action of being pushed or drawn beneath another object. 2 The act of subducting or taking away. 3 arithmetical subtraction.
WordNet
n. a geological process in which one edge of a crustal plate is forced sideways and downward into the mantle below another plate
Wikipedia
Subduction is a geological process that takes place at convergent boundaries of tectonic plates where one plate moves under another and is forced down into the mantle. Regions where this process occurs are known as subduction zones. Rates of subduction are typically in centimetres per year, with the average rate of convergence being approximately two to eight centimetres per year along most plate boundaries.
Plates include both oceanic crust and continental crust. Stable subduction zones involve the oceanic lithosphere of one plate sliding beneath the continental or oceanic lithosphere of another plate due to the higher density of the oceanic lithosphere. That is, the subducted lithosphere is always oceanic while the over-riding lithosphere may or may not be oceanic. Subduction zones are sites that have a high rate of volcanism, earthquakes, and mountain building.
Orogenesis, or mountain-building, occurs when large pieces of material on the subducting plate (such as island arcs) are pressed into the over-riding plate or when subhorizontal contraction occurs in the over-riding plate. These areas are subject to many earthquakes, which are caused by the interactions between the subducting slab and the mantle, the volcanoes, and (when applicable) the mountain-building related to island arc collisions.
Usage examples of "subduction".
Along the edge of a subduction zone on Earth, some ten centimeters of surface per standard year might be carried into the depths.
One hundred eighty-seven days after going down into the subduction zone the recorder had somehow emerged among the stars.
He steered through the many sharp twists of the ravine, an inactive subduction trench.
The three principal bodies in the Azlaroc system were fast approaching the same relative positions they had held when the surviving recorder was carried down into the subduction trench by a robot.
He knew they would not be going that far and he felt a ridiculously strong sense of relief that they would not need to go under blacksky to reach the subduction trench.
They prove my hypothesis that within recent geological time some sophont race has been burying garbage in this subduction zone of the planet!
I have mathematically calculated the effects of a Richter seven epicentered on the Kuril subduction trench twenty K from this island and have mapped an area on the plain above us that I believe will not be affected by the quake.
Ninety-five percent of all earthquakes occur in what are called subduction zones where the moving plates crash into each other, the plates that hold the oceans of the world literally crawling beneath the continental plates.
She had been working alone in a remote area, and it was feared that she had been caught in a subduction zone.
They are in no way volcanic, but are the result of a subduction, or wrinkling, of the surface of the earth.
Tectonic plate subduction lifted the whole basin millions of years ago.
He learned of the immemorial routes they followed among the slow, cold currents at the bottom of the river, of their endless work of pushing sediment into the subduction channels which transported it to the Rim Mountains for redistribution by glacial melt.
They altered their buoyancy, lifting from the long trenches they had made in the ooze and drifting on cold currents until they reached the maws of nearby subduction channels.
Our continent suffered complete subduction into the asthenosphere prior to that.
They altered their buoyancy, lifting from the long trenches they had made in the ooze and drifting on cold currents until they reached the maws of nearby subduction channels .