Contract

How to spell contract

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce contract

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contract mean?

1. nounA formal, legally binding agreement between two or more parties.
2. verbTo become smaller or draw together in size.
3. verbTo catch or become infected with a disease.

Contract in a sentence

• noun

  She signed the employment contract before her first day.

• verb

  Metal rails contract slightly in very cold weather.

• verb

  Travellers can contract malaria in some tropical regions.

• noun

  The builder broke the terms of the contract and lost the job.

• verb

  The muscles in your hand contract when you make a fist.

• verb

  Workers who handle the soil may contract a serious infection.

Where does contract come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb contrahere, which combined con- 'together' with trahere 'to draw or pull', so the literal sense was 'to draw together'. The past participle contractus gave rise to the noun contractus, 'a drawing together' and, by extension, 'an agreement reached between parties'. English took the word in during the 1300s through Old French, keeping both threads of meaning: the physical idea of pulling something into a smaller space (a muscle that contracts, metal that contracts in the cold) and the legal idea of two sides drawing themselves together into a binding bargain. The same trahere root still pulls its weight in everyday relatives such as 'tractor', 'attract', and 'extract'. The spelling stays steady across the noun and the verb even though the stress shifts, which is why it is easy to write but easy to mispronounce out of context.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• tract (from Latin trahere/tractus: to draw, pull)