Contracted

How to spell contracted

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce contracted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contracted mean?

1. verbFormally arranged or hired through a binding agreement.
2. verbCaught or became infected with a disease.
3. verbBecame smaller or drew inward, especially through cold or tension.

Contracted in a sentence

• The council contracted an outside firm to repair the bridge.

• She contracted malaria during her work in the tropics.

• The steel beam contracted slightly as the night air cooled.

• They contracted a local supplier to deliver the parts each week.

• Several patients contracted the infection on the same ward.

• The muscle contracted sharply and caused a cramp.

Where does contracted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'contract', which descends from the Latin verb contrahere, formed from con- meaning 'together' and trahere meaning 'to draw' or 'to pull'. The literal sense was therefore 'to draw together', and the past participle contractus gave English both the sense of drawing inward (shrinking) and the sense of a binding agreement in which parties draw together to fix terms. English took the word through Old French in the late medieval period, with the legal meaning of a sealed agreement well established by the 1300s and the physical meaning of becoming smaller arriving alongside it. The same trahere root quietly powers a whole family of English words, including 'tractor', 'attract', 'extract' and 'subtract', all of which involve pulling or drawing in some way. The medical sense, as in catching an illness, grew from the idea of 'drawing in' a disease to oneself. Because the spelling is so transparently con + tract + ed, it rarely traps fluent writers.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• tract (from Latin trahere: to draw or pull)
• -ed (past-tense/participle suffix)