contents

1. 1
   noun

   The things or material held inside a container or other enclosing space.

   Customs officers inspected the contents of every crate at the border.

   The bottle's label lists its contents in order of weight.

   Note

   Almost always plural, and it usually comes with of: the contents of the cup, of a house, of a crate. Insurance also uses it as a modifier. Contents insurance covers the things inside a home, a separate matter from the homeowner's policy. When the fires devour the contents of Edison's buildings in Edwin Black's Internal Combustion (2006), the word means everything those buildings held.

2. 2
   nounplural

   A list near the front of a book naming its chapters or sections and the pages on which each begins.

   Like a building directory in a lobby that tells you which floor holds what.

   She scanned the contents to locate the appendix quickly.

   According to the contents, the index starts on page four hundred.

   Note

   Short for table of contents, and found only in the plural. The singular makes a useful contrast. You read the contents to see how a book is laid out, then dig into its content, the substance itself. Keeping the two apart avoids an easy slip: a book's contents is its list of chapters, while its content is what those chapters say.

3. 3
   noun

   Plural of content.

   The platform's contents range from documentaries to short films.

   They organized the magazine's contents into themed sections.

   Note

   A plural the base noun rarely needs. Content meaning satisfaction, or a vote of assent, is uncountable, so contents almost always belongs to the things held inside. The same spelling is also the verb form in he contents himself, a different word entirely. The surrounding grammar tells you which you are reading: the verb has a subject and an object, while the noun usually follows the.

4. 4
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of content.

   He never contents himself with second place.

   Praise rarely contents a perfectionist for long.

   Note

   The -s form used with he, she, it or a singular noun, and it always takes an object: something contents someone. Its most natural setting is the reflexive pattern contents oneself with, meaning settles for or is satisfied by. An older meaning, to pay or requite someone, is now obsolete, so a sentence like he contents his creditors reads as period language.

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