contingent. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

contingent

SYLLABICATION:	con·tin·gent
PRONUNCIATION:	kn-tnjnt
ADJECTIVE:	1. Liable to occur but not with certainty; possible: “All salaries are reckoned on contingent as well as on actual services” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (in OED) 1860). 2. Dependent on conditions or occurrences not yet established; conditional: arms sales contingent on the approval of Congress. See synonyms at dependent. 3. Happening by chance or accident; fortuitous. See synonyms at accidental. 4. Logic True only under certain conditions; not necessarily or universally true: a contingent proposition.
NOUN:	1. An event or condition that is likely but not inevitable. 2. A share or quota, as of troops, contributed to a general effort. 3. A representative group forming part of an assemblage.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English, from Latin contingns, contingent-, present participle of contingere, to touch. See contact.
OTHER FORMS:	con·tingent·ly —ADVERB


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.