contracting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of contract.

   The heart muscle keeps contracting and relaxing in a steady rhythm.

   She worried about contracting an infection during her hospital stay.

   Note

   One spelling carries several different verbs: drawing together, agreeing by contract, and catching or incurring something. The grammar usually tells them apart. A muscle contracting takes no object, but a firm contracting a builder, or a patient contracting an infection, does. The shrinking and the paid-work meanings also have their own noun senses: the act of shrinking and contract work.

2. 2
   USKON-trakt-ing/ˈkɑntɹæktɪŋ/UKUKkuhn-TRAKT-ing/kənˈtɹæktɪŋ/US

   noununcountable

   Paid work performed on a contract basis rather than as a salaried, permanent employee.

   Many engineers move into contracting for the higher daily rates.

   After years of contracting, she finally accepted a permanent position.

   Similarfreelancing, consulting, freelance

3. 3
   adjective

   Becoming smaller in size, or drawing inward to occupy a smaller area.

   The contracting muscle pulled the bone into a new position.

   Doctors observed the contracting pupils respond to the bright light.

   Similarshrinking, narrowing

   Oppositerelaxing

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The process by which something draws together and becomes smaller in size.

   The contracting of the heart muscle pushes blood through the body.

   Engineers account for the contracting of steel beams in cold temperatures.

   Similarcontraction, shrinkage, shrinking, constriction

   Oppositeexpansion, dilation

   Note

   Countable as well as mass, it can name each separate tightening, as in "the contractings of his muscles," or the ongoing process as a whole. In the plural it is always about shrinking, never about paid contract work, which shares the spelling. Context, usually a body part or a material, settles which one is meant.

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