Contractual

How to spell contractual

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce contractual

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contractual mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to, agreed in, or required by a formal contract.

Contractual in a sentence

• The supplier failed to meet its contractual obligations on delivery dates.

• Both parties signed the document to confirm the contractual terms.

Where does contractual come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adjective is built on 'contract', which English took from the Latin contractus, the past participle of contrahere, meaning 'to draw together' or 'to bring about'. That verb joins con-, meaning 'together', with trahere, meaning 'to draw or pull', the same root that gives us 'tractor', 'attract', and 'extract'. A contract is literally an agreement that draws two parties together into binding terms, and the noun entered English in the 1300s through legal and commercial use. The adjective 'contractual', meaning 'relating to or fixed by a contract', was assembled later, around the early 1800s, by adding the Latin-style ending -ual to the stem. The spelling trap lives in that ending: writers reach for the everyday '-ual' (as in 'actual' or 'gradual'), but they must keep the full 'contract' stem intact, so the 'ct' before the 'u' is what people drop or scramble.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• tract (from Latin trahere, to draw or pull)
• -ual (adjective suffix)