Other forms: contracts, contracted, contracting
A contract is the agreement two sides write down and sign, with the terms spelled out and both names at the bottom. A two-year phone contract, the contract you sign on the first day of a job, the pile of paper handed over when you rent a flat.
Say the noun with the stress at the front, CON-tract; move the stress to the end, con-TRACT, and you have a verb that means something else entirely — to get smaller or tighter. Metal contracts as it cools, a muscle contracts, a pupil contracts in bright light. The verb also has a formal use for catching a disease: he contracted malaria abroad. And it does agreements too, which is where contract out and contractor come from. You sign, break, renew or terminate a contract; a player who cannot leave is under contract.
1nouncontractA formal agreement between two sides, written down and signed, that the law will enforce.~88%
“She read the contract twice before signing it.”
2verbbecomeTo become smaller, shorter or tighter.~2%
“Metal contracts as it cools.”
3verbcatchTo catch an illness.~8%
“He contracted malaria while working abroad.”
4verbarrangeTo arrange work by formal agreement.~2%
“The council contracted a local firm to clear the snow.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
contract is a binding agreement.
A contract draws two people together. Latin contractus came from contrahere, "to bring together, to conclude a bargain", built from con-, "with, together", and trahere, "to draw, to pull". The shrinking sense is the same picture seen from inside: something pulled in on itself.
Latin
contractus
Old French
contract
English, today
contract
Built from
From Middle English -, from Old French contract, from Latin contractus, from contraho (“to bring together, to bring about, to conclude a bargain”) [from con- (“with, together”) + traho (“to draw, to pull”)] -tus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA