The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Compress \Com"press\, n. [F. compresse.] (Surg.)
   A folded piece of cloth, pledget of lint, etc., used to cover
   the dressing of wounds, and so placed as, by the aid of a
   bandage, to make due pressure on any part.
   [1913 Webster]

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Compress \Com*press"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Compressed; p. pr &
   vb. n. Compressing.] [L. compressus, p. p. of comprimere to
   compress: com- + premere to press. See Press.]
   1. To press or squeeze together; to force into a narrower
      compass; to reduce the volume of by pressure; to compact;
      to condense; as, to compress air or water.
      [1913 Webster]

            Events of centuries . . . compressed within the
            compass of a single life.             --D. Webster.
      [1913 Webster]

            The same strength of expression, though more
            compressed, runs through his historical harangues.
                                                  --Melmoth.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. To embrace sexually. [Obs.] --Pope.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. (Computers) to reduce the space required for storage (of
      binary data) by an algorithm which converts the data to a
      smaller number of bits while preserving the information
      content. The compressed data is usually decompressed to
      recover the initial data format before subsequent use.
      [PJC]

   Syn: To crowd; squeeze; condense; reduce; abridge.
        [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

compress
    n 1: a cloth pad or dressing (with or without medication)
         applied firmly to some part of the body (to relieve
         discomfort or reduce fever)
    v 1: make more compact by or as if by pressing; "compress the
         data" [syn: compress, compact, pack together] [ant:
         decompress, uncompress]
    2: squeeze or press together; "she compressed her lips"; "the
       spasm contracted the muscle" [syn: compress, constrict,
       squeeze, compact, contract, press]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

138 Moby Thesaurus words for "compress":
   Ace bandage, Band-Aid, abbreviate, abridge, abstract,
   adhesive tape, application, band, bandage, bandaging, bear, binder,
   bob, boil down, brace, capsulize, cast, cataplasm, circumscribe,
   clamp, clip, coarct, compact, concentrate, condense, congest,
   consolidate, constrict, constringe, contract, cotton,
   court plaster, cram, cramp, cravat, crop, crowd, crush, curtail,
   cut, cut back, cut down, cut off short, cut short, damp, dampen,
   decrease, deduct, deflate, densen, densify, depreciate, depress,
   diminish, dock, downgrade, draw, draw in, draw together, dressing,
   elastic bandage, elide, ensphere, epithem, epitomize, foreshorten,
   four-tailed bandage, gauze, jam, knit, lessen, lint, lower, mow,
   narrow, nip, pare, pinch, plaster, plaster cast, pledget, poll,
   pollard, poultice, press, prune, pucker, pucker up, purse, push,
   ram down, reap, recap, recapitulate, reduce, retrench, roll back,
   roller, roller bandage, rubber bandage, scale down, shave, shear,
   shorten, shrink, simplify, sling, snub, solidify, splint, sponge,
   squab, squash, squeeze, squish, step down, strangle, strangulate,
   stunt, stupe, sum up, summarize, synopsize, take from, take in,
   tampon, tape, telescope, tent, tighten, tourniquet,
   triangular bandage, trim, truncate, tune down, tweak, wad up,
   wrinkle



The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

compress
 vt.

    [Unix] When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching of a
    file using a particular C implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost
    et al.: and widely circulated via Usenet; use of crunch itself in this
    sense is rare among Unix hackers. Specifically, compress is built around
    the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in ?A Technique for High
    Performance Data Compression?, Terry A. Welch, IEEE Computer, vol. 17, no.
    6 (June 1984), pp. 8--19.


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

compress

   1. To feed data through any compression algorithm.

   2.  The Unix program "compress", now largely
   supplanted by gzip.

   Unix compress was written in C by Joseph M. Orost, James
   A. Woods et al., and was widely circulated via Usenet.  It
   uses the Lempel-Ziv Welch algorithm and normally produces
   files with the suffix ".Z".

   Compress uses variable length codes.  Initially, nine-bit
   codes are output until they are all used.  When this occurs,
   ten-bit codes are used and so on, until an
   implementation-dependent maximum is reached.

   After every 10 kilobytes of input the compression ratio is
   checked.  If it is decreasing then the entire string table is
   discarded and information is collected from scratch.