Other forms: contended, contends, contending
To contend is to argue a case — or to struggle against something. Two senses that share the idea of a fight.
The arguing sense is formal and appears constantly in legal and academic writing, where the claimant contends that introduces an argument. It takes a that-clause. The struggling sense takes with, so having to contend with bad weather means dealing with it. There is a third sense meaning to compete, and a contender is somebody with a real chance of winning, which is where the famous line about coulda been a contender comes from.
To contend is to stretch against. Latin contendere joins com, together, to tendere, to stretch, the same tendere that lies behind tend, attend and intend.
Proto-Indo-European
*tend-
Latin
contendere — to stretch out, extend, strive after, contend
Old French
contendre
Middle English
contenden
English, today
contend
Built from
From Middle English contenden, borrowed from Old French contendre, from Latin contendere (“to stretch out, extend, strive after, contend”), from com- (“together”) + tendere (“to stretch”); see tend, and compare attend, extend, intend, subtend.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA