contain

verb

1. (transitive)To hold inside.

   “The brown box contains three stacks of books.”

   “a spray bottle containing water.”

   “At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. […] In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass.”

   “[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria,[…].”

2. (transitive)To include as a part.

   “Most of the meals they offer contain meat.”

   “Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.”

3. (transitive)To put constraints upon; to restrain; to confine; to keep within bounds.

   “I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself!”

   “Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves.”

   “[The king's] only Person is oftentimes instead of an Army, to contain the unruly People from a thousand evil Occasions.”

   “Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn.”

   “There she goes / There she goes again / Racing through my brain / And I just can't contain / This feeling that remains”

4. (transitive)To have as an element or subset.

   “A group contains a unique inverse for each of its elements.”

   “If that subgraph contains the vertex in question then it must be spanning.”

5. (intransitive, obsolete)To restrain desire; to live in continence or chastity.

   “But if they cannot contain, let them marry.”