that's

1. 1
   contractioncontraction

   A contraction of 'that is', joining the word 'that' to the verb 'is'.

   That's the reason the meeting was postponed.

   Everyone agrees that's a fair compromise.

   Note

   One spelling, several verbs: the 's is just the final sound of a verb ending in s. So that's can also stand for the 'that has' form and others. Is is the everyday reading, the one in plain pointing-out sentences like that's the book or that's his tenth game. Readers tell the other readings apart by the words that follow, not by the spelling.

2. 2
   contractioncontraction

   A contraction of 'that has', joining 'that' to the helping verb 'has'.

   That's caused more trouble than anyone expected.

   That's never happened in all my years here.

   Note

   The perfect-tense partner of the is form: when a past participle follows, the 's means has, as in that's been bugging me or that's never happened. The same holds when that is a relative pronoun in mid-sentence (the problem that's been bugging me). Before a plain noun or adjective, the reading falls back to is.

3. 3
   contractioncontraction

   A contraction of 'that was', joining 'that' to the past-tense verb 'was'.

   That's some party last weekend; the neighbors are still talking about it.

   That's a long drive yesterday, but we pulled into the motel just before midnight.

4. 4
   determinerNorthern Ireland

   A relative possessive linking a non-human thing to a following noun, filling the role that standard English gives to 'whose'.

   The factory that's chimney collapsed has been demolished.

   He repaired the gate that's hinges had rusted through.

   Similarwhose

   Note

   Not a contraction but that plus the possessive 's. It is used in Black Country and Northern Irish speech, where whose is kept for people: a flick-knife that's spring was slow, in Jim Crace's Arcadia (1992). It turns up further afield, too. A Southern California Edison official, quoted in The Detroit News in 1993, spoke of a product that's time had not yet come. Elsewhere it reads as nonstandard, and whose or of which is the safe choice.

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