contract

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law. See Synonyms at bargain.
2. n. The writing or document containing such an agreement.
3. n. The branch of law dealing with formal agreements between parties.
4. n. Marriage as a formal agreement; betrothal.
5. n. Games The last and highest bid of a suit in one hand in bridge.
6. n. Games The number of tricks thus bid.
7. n. Games Contract bridge.
8. n. A paid assignment to murder someone: put out a contract on the mobster's life.
9. v. To enter into by contract; establish or settle by formal agreement: contract a marriage.
10. v. To acquire or incur: contract obligations; contract a serious illness.
11. v. To reduce in size by drawing together; shrink.
12. v. To pull together; wrinkle.
13. v. Grammar To shorten (a word or words) by omitting or combining some of the letters or sounds, as do not to don't.
14. v. To enter into or make an agreement: contract for garbage collection.
15. v. To become reduced in size by or as if by being drawn together: The pupils of the patient's eyes contracted.
16. contract out To engage a person outside an organization by contract to undertake or produce.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To draw together or closer; draw into a smaller compass, either by compression or by the omission of parts; shorten; abridge; condense; narrow; lessen: as, to contract a space or an inclosure; to contract the period of life; to contract a word or an essay.
2. To draw the parts of together; wrinkle; pucker.
3. In grammar, to shorten by combination of concurrent vowels into one long vowel or a diphthong.
4. To betroth; affiance.
5. To make, settle, or establish by contract or agreement.
6. To acquire, as by habit, use, or contagion; gain by accretion or variation; bring on; incur: as, to contract vicious habits by indulgence; to contract debt by extravagance; to contract disease.
7. To be drawn together; be reduced in compass; become smaller, shorter, or narrower; shrink.
8. To make a bargain; enter into an agreement or engagement; covenant: as, to contract for a load of flour; to contract to carry the mail.
9. To bind one's self by promise of marriage.
10. Synonyms Diminish, Dwindle, etc. See decrease.
11. Condensed; brief.
12. Concrete.
13. Contracted; affianced; betrothed.
14. n. A drawing together; mutual attraction; attractive force.
15. n. An agreement between two or more parties for the doing or the not doing of some definite thing. Parsons, Contracts, I. 6. See def. 5.
16. n. Specifically Betrothal.
17. n. The writing which contains the agreement of parties, with the terms and conditions, and which serves as evidence of the obligation.
18. n. Specifically, in law, an interchange of legal rights by agreement. In the most general sense, any agreement or obligation whereby one party becomes bound to another, whether by record or judgment, or by assent, or even impliedly, to do or to omit to do an act. In this sense it is used in contradistinction to obligations arising out of torts or wrongs.
19. n. A written contract specifying in detail what is to be done, as a building-contract with specifications.
20. n. A contracted word; a contraction.

Wiktionary

1. v. intransitive To draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.
2. v. transitive To enter into a contract with.
3. v. transitive To gain or acquire (an illness).
4. n. An agreement between two or more parties, to perform a specific job or work order, often temporary or of fixed duration and usually governed by a written agreement.
5. n. law An agreement which the law will enforce in some way. A legally binding contract must contain at least one promise, i.e., a commitment or offer, by an offeror to and accepted by an offeree to do something in the future. A contract is thus executory rather than executed.
6. n. law A part of legal studies dealing with laws and jurisdiction related to contracts.
7. n. informal An order, usually given to a hired assassin, to kill someone.
8. n. The declarer's undertaking to win the number of tricks bid with a stated suit as trump

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To draw together or nearer; to reduce to a less compass; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.
2. v. To draw together so as to wrinkle; to knit.
3. v. To bring on; to incur; to acquire.
4. v. To enter into, with mutual obligations; to make a bargain or covenant for.
5. v. To betroth; to affiance.
6. v. (Gram.) To shorten by omitting a letter or letters or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one.
7. v. To be drawn together so as to be diminished in size or extent; to shrink; to be reduced in compass or in duration.
8. v. To make an agreement; to covenant; to agree; to bargain.
9. adj. Contracted.
10. adj. obsolete Contracted; affianced; betrothed.
11. n. (Law) The agreement of two or more persons, upon a sufficient consideration or cause, to do, or to abstain from doing, some act; an agreement in which a party undertakes to do, or not to do, a particular thing; a formal bargain; a compact; an interchange of legal rights.
12. n. A formal writing which contains the agreement of parties, with the terms and conditions, and which serves as a proof of the obligation.
13. n. The act of formally betrothing a man and woman.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. compress or concentrate
2. n. (contract bridge) the highest bid becomes the contract setting the number of tricks that the bidder must make
3. v. make or become more narrow or restricted
4. v. squeeze or press together
5. v. become smaller or draw together
6. v. engage by written agreement
7. n. a binding agreement between two or more persons that is enforceable by law
8. v. enter into a contractual arrangement
9. v. reduce in scope while retaining essential elements
10. v. make smaller
11. v. be stricken by an illness, fall victim to an illness
12. n. a variety of bridge in which the bidder receives points toward game only for the number of tricks he bid