Continued deformation over time when constantly loaded, occurs in tissue due to the expulsion of water

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Continued deformation under a constant load is creep. This reflects how soft tissues behave in a time-dependent, viscoelastic way: when you apply a steady force, the tissue first deforms elastically, but then the viscous components and fluid within the tissue rearrange and flow, allowing additional deformation to accumulate over time. In many tissues, water is expelled as the matrix reorganizes, which contributes to the gradual lengthening you see under sustained loading.

This is different from relaxation, where the tissue is held at a fixed length and the internal stress decreases over time. Hysteresis refers to the energy lost in a cycle of loading and unloading, visible as a loop on a stress–strain path. Strain simply measures how much the tissue has deformed, not how that deformation evolves over time under a constant load.