Definition of "contract" []

• An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law. See Synonyms at bargain. (noun)
• The writing or document containing such an agreement. (noun)
• The branch of law dealing with formal agreements between parties. (noun)
• Marriage as a formal agreement; betrothal. (noun)
• Games The last and highest bid of a suit in one hand in bridge. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "To see why, we first need to distinguish between actual, flesh-and-blood arrangements, in the law or in society more generally, that we call ˜contracts™, and the theoretical apparatus that contract theorists use to ground moral principles, which is also called (more metaphorically) a ˜contract™."
• "Your Committee can not regard marriage as a _mere contract_, but as something above and beyond; something more binding than records, more solemn than specialties; and the person who reasons as to the relations of husband and wife as upon an ordinary contract, in their opinion commits a fatal error at the outset; and your Committee can not recommend any action based on such a theory."
• "[Sidenote: All ages have the same interest in preservation of the contract, and the same Constitution.] "The nature of such an _original contract_ of government proves that there is not only a power in the people, who have _inherited its freedom_, to assert their own title to it, but they are bound in duty to transmit the _same_ Constitution to their posterity also.""