Contender

How to spell contender

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce contender

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contender mean?

1. nounA person or group competing with others to win something, such as a title, prize, or position.

Contender in a sentence

• The young boxer is now a serious contender for the championship belt.

• One candidate quickly emerged as the leading contender for the chief executive role.

Where does contender come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb contendere, which meant 'to strain, to compete, or to fight'. That verb was built from the prefix con- (here intensive, originally 'with' or 'together') and tendere, meaning literally 'to stretch'; so a contender was someone stretching every effort against a rival. English took the verb 'contend' from this Latin source in the late 1400s, often by way of Old French, and the agent noun 'contender', meaning one who competes, grew up around it. The same tendere root stretches across a surprising family of English words, including 'tension', 'tendon', 'extend', and 'intend', all carrying that sense of pulling or stretching. Remembering the silent logic of con- plus tend plus -er helps fix the spelling, since the trap is mostly the unstressed final '-er' that sounds like '-or'.

How the word is built

• con- (with, together)
• tend (from Latin tendere: to stretch, strive)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)