contracts

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of contract.

   Both contracts expire at the end of the fiscal year.

   The agency manages dozens of supplier contracts at once.

   Note

   The plural covers every kind of agreement the singular names, from legally binding promises to fixed-term work orders. It can mean the deals themselves or the papers that record them: signing contracts is about documents, while breaking them is about obligations. Two specialized uses come along too. Informally, contracts put out on someone are orders to kill. In bridge, a contract is the declarer's undertaking to win the tricks bid.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of contract.

   The steel beam contracts slightly as the temperature drops overnight.

   The firm contracts with local builders for each new project.

   Note

   One verb form serves three quite different families of meaning: shrinking, agreeing and incurring. A beam contracts in the cold, and a speaker contracts "do not" to "don't." A firm contracts with builders, or contracts them directly. A person contracts a debt. The same letters also spell the plural noun, so "she contracts builders" and "her contracts" are told apart only by their place in the sentence.

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