Contested

How to spell contested

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce contested

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contested mean?

1. verbChallenged, disputed, or competed for, in the past tense.
2. adjectiveSubject to dispute, rivalry, or competition; not settled or uncontested.

Contested in a sentence

• verb

  The losing candidate contested the election result in court.

• adjective

  The contested divorce dragged on for months over the family home.

• verb

  Both companies contested the patent for nearly a decade.

• adjective

  That seat is one of the most fiercely contested in the whole region.

Where does contested come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb contestari, which literally meant 'to call to witness' or 'to begin a lawsuit by calling witnesses'. It was formed from com-, meaning 'together', and testari, 'to bear witness', which itself grew from testis, the Latin word for 'a witness'. In Roman legal practice a contestatio was the formal opening of a dispute before witnesses, so the idea of conflict and rival claims was baked in from the start. English took the verb in the late 1500s, partly through French contester, with the sense of disputing, challenging, or fighting over something. The same testis root surfaces in everyday relatives such as 'testify', 'testimony', and 'protest', and remembering that shared 'test' core is a tidy way to keep the spelling straight.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• test (from Latin testari: to bear witness)
• -ed (past tense / adjectival suffix)