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Contract vs Decade - What's the difference?

contract | decade |

As nouns the difference between contract and decade

is that contract is 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 while decade is period of ten days (such as the week in the ).

As an adjective contract

is (obsolete) contracted; affianced; betrothed.

As a verb contract

is (ambitransitive) to draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.

contract

Etymology 1

From (etyl), from (etyl) contract, from (etyl) contractum, past participle of .

Noun

(en noun)
  • 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.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
  • , title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}
  • (legal) 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.
  • (legal) A part of legal studies dealing with laws and jurisdiction related to contracts.
  • (informal) An order, usually given to a hired assassin, to kill someone.
  • (bridge) The declarer's undertaking to win the number of tricks bid with a stated suit as trump.
  • Hypernyms
    * (agreement that is legally binding) agreement
    Hyponyms
    * (agreement that is legally binding) bailment
    Derived terms
    * contractual * fixed-term contract * contract of employment

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (obsolete) Contracted; affianced; betrothed.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • (obsolete) Not abstract; concrete.
  • * Robert Recorde, , 1557:
  • But now in eche kinde of these, there are certaine nombers named Ab?tracte'': and other called nombers ''Contracte .

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl), from (etyl) contracter, from (etyl) contractum, past participle of . the verb developed after the noun, and originally meant only "draw together"; the sense "make a contract with" developed later.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (ambitransitive) To draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.
  • The snail's body contracted into its shell.
    to contract one's sphere of action
  • * Wordsworth
  • Years contracting to a moment.
  • * Dr. H. More
  • In all things desuetude doth contract and narrow our faculties.
  • (grammar) To shorten by omitting a letter or letters or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one.
  • The word "cannot" is often contracted into "can't".
  • To enter into a contract with. (rfex)
  • To enter into, with mutual obligations; to make a bargain or covenant for.
  • * Hakluyt
  • We have contracted an inviolable amity, peace, and league with the aforesaid queen.
  • * Strype
  • Many persons prohibited by law.
  • To make an agreement or contract; to covenant; to agree; to bargain.
  • to contract for carrying the mail
  • To bring on; to incur; to acquire.
  • She contracted the habit of smoking in her teens.
    to contract a debt
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Each from each contract new strength and light.
  • * Jonathan Swift
  • Such behaviour we contract by having much conversed with persons of high stature.
  • To gain or acquire (an illness).
  • * 1999 , Davidson C. Umeh, Protect Your Life: A Health Handbook for Law Enforcement Professionals (page 69)
  • An officer contracted hepatitis B and died after handling the blood-soaked clothing of a homicide victim
  • To draw together so as to wrinkle; to knit.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Thou didst contract and purse thy brow.
  • To betroth; to affiance.
  • * Shakespeare
  • The truth is, she and I, long since contracted , / Are now so sure, that nothing can dissolve us.
    Synonyms
    * (lessen) abate, decrease, lessen, reduce * (shorten) shorten, shrink * catch, get
    Antonyms
    * (lessen) increase, expand * (shorten) grow, lengthen

    decade

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A series or group of ten things.
  • a decade of soldiers
  • A period of ten years.
  • *
  • The repeated exposure, over decades , to most taxa here treated has resulted in repeated modifications of both diagnoses and discussions, as initial ideas of the various taxa underwent—often repeated—conceptual modification.
  • * {{quote-magazine
  • , year=1979 , date=December , title=Museums , magazine=Texas Monthly , volume=7 , issue=12 , page=22 citation , passage=Thru May: 1920s — The Decade That Roared. New exhibition portraying historical events and everyday life during the Roaring Twenties.}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-03
  • , author=David S. Senchina , title=Athletics and Herbal Supplements , volume=101, issue=2, page=134 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=Athletes' use of herbal supplements has skyrocketed in the past two decades .}}
  • * 2002 , , The Great Nation , Penguin 2003, p. 481:
  • The year was divided up into twelve months renamed after the seasons [...]; each month comprised three ‘decades ’ of ten days – with the décadi replacing Sundays as a day of rest; and each day was reconsecrated to a natural product or farming tool or technique.
  • (Roman Catholicism) A series of ten Hail Marys in the rosary.
  • (physics, engineering) The interval between any two quantities having the ratio 10 to 1.
  • There are decades between 1.8 and 18, between 25 and 250 and between 0.03 and 0.003.

    Usage notes

    Unlike centuries or millennia (which properly run from xxx1 to xxx0), decades are an informal unit generally taken to run from xxx0 to xxx9. That is, the first century began in the year 1 and ended in the year 100 but the Nineties are those years whose name includes the word "ninety": '90, '91, '92...

    Synonyms

    * (ten years)