'Contract' is Latin for 'draw together' — legal agreements, shrinking, and catching disease from one image.
A binding agreement between two or more parties (noun); to draw together, to shrink; to enter into a formal agreement; to catch a disease (verb).
From Latin contractus, past participle of contrahere (to draw together, to bring together, to unite), composed of con- (together) + trahere (to draw, to pull). The PIE root is *dʰreǵʰ- or *tragh- (to draw, to drag), which also underlies English drag, draw, and trail. The legal sense of agreement arose because Roman contracts were formed by parties literally drawing together — coming to mutual terms, as if pulling
The word 'contract' has three entirely different verb meanings — to shrink, to agree, and to catch a disease — all traceable to the single Latin image of 'drawing together.' Muscles contract (draw together physically), parties contract (draw together in agreement), and you contract an illness (draw it together with yourself).
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