Contiguous

How to spell contiguous

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce contiguous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contiguous mean?

1. adjectiveSharing a common border, or touching along an edge; immediately next to something.

Contiguous in a sentence

• The two contiguous offices share a single thin wall.

• The survey covered forty-eight contiguous states, leaving out the islands and the far north.

Where does contiguous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin contiguus, meaning 'touching' or 'bordering', which was built on the verb contingere, 'to be in contact with'. That verb joined the prefix con-, meaning 'together' or 'with', to the verb tangere, 'to touch', so the literal idea is of two things touching one another along a shared edge. English adopted it in the early 1600s with the sense of sharing a common boundary, which is still its core meaning today. The same tangere root sits inside a whole family of familiar relatives, including 'contact', 'tangent', 'tangible', and 'contagious', all of which trace back to the notion of touching. Knowing that touching root helps with the spelling trap: the middle is tig, from tangere, and the ending is the same -uous you see in 'continuous' and 'ambiguous'.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• tig (from Latin tangere: to touch)
• -uous (adjective suffix)