contingent

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle English, from Old French contingent, from Medieval Latin contingens (possible, contingent), present participle of contingere (to touch, meet, attain to, happen), from com- (together) + tangere (to touch).

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /kənˈtɪn.d͡ʒənt/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Hyphenation: con‧tin‧gent

Noun

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contingent (plural contingents)

  1. An event which may or may not happen; that which is unforeseen, undetermined, or dependent on something future.
    Synonym: contingency
  2. That which falls to one in a division or apportionment among a number; a suitable share.
    Synonym: proportion
  3. (military) A quota of troops.
    • 2014 November 27, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian:
      Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured Mosul in June, but the groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to Jordan’s anti-terrorism law. It is estimated that 2,000 Jordanians have fought and 250 of them have died in Syria – making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and Tunisians.

Translations

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Adjective

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contingent (comparative more contingent, superlative most contingent)

  1. Possible or liable, but not certain to occur.
    Synonyms: incidental, casual
    Antonyms: certain, inevitable, necessary, impossible
  2. (with upon or on) Dependent on something that is undetermined or unknown, that may or may not occur.
    Synonyms: conditional; see also Thesaurus:conditional
    The success of his undertaking is contingent upon events which he cannot control.
    a contingent estate
    • 1989, Thurgood Marshall, “Dissenting Opinion”, in Watkins v. Murray[1]:
      The imposition of the death penalty should not be contingent on a particular jury's unguided understanding of a legal term of art.
    • 2021, Meghan O'Gieblyn, quoting Hans Blumenberg, chapter 11, in God, Human, Animal, Machine [] , →ISBN:
      This rather narrow theological dispute eventually helped eradicate from Western philosophy the idea of universals—the notion that concepts in the mind correspond to eternal truths, like the Platonic forms—and succeeded in making the world, as Blumenberg puts it, “radically contingent.”
    • 2023 November 5, Sam Jones, “PSOE members back Catalan amnesty plan to secure power in Spain”, in The Guardian[2], →ISSN:
      Both Catalan parties have said their support for getting the PSOE back into office will be contingent on an amnesty for the hundreds of people who participated in the failed push to secede from Spain in October 2017.
  3. Not logically necessarily true or false.
  4. Temporary.
    contingent labor
    contingent worker

Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Catalan

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin contingentem.

Adjective

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contingent m or f (masculine and feminine plural contingents)

  1. contingent

Noun

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contingent m (plural contingents)

  1. contingent
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Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin contingentem.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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contingent (feminine contingente, masculine plural contingents, feminine plural contingentes)

  1. contingent
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Noun

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contingent m (plural contingents)

  1. quota
  2. contingent

Further reading

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Latin

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Verb

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contingent

  1. third-person plural future active indicative of contingō

Romanian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French contingent, from Latin contingens.

Adjective

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contingent m or n (feminine singular contingentă, masculine plural contingenți, feminine and neuter plural contingente)

  1. contingent

Declension

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