contract vs stretch

contract

verb
  • To draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen. 

  • To enter into a contract with. 

  • To enter into, with mutual obligations; to make a bargain or covenant for. 

  • To make an agreement or contract; to covenant; to agree; to bargain. 

  • To betroth; to affiance. 

  • To shorten by omitting a letter or letters or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one. 

  • To bring on; to incur; to acquire. 

  • To gain or acquire (an illness). 

  • To draw together so as to wrinkle; to knit. 

noun
  • An order, usually given to a hired assassin, to kill someone. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • The document containing such an agreement. 

  • A part of legal studies dealing with laws and jurisdiction related to contracts. 

  • The declarer's undertaking to win the number of tricks bid with a stated suit as trump. 

stretch

verb
  • To lengthen by pulling. 

  • To get more use than expected from a limited resource. 

  • To make great demands on the capacity or resources of something. 

  • To lengthen when pulled. 

  • To pull tight. 

  • To extend one’s limbs or another part of the body in order to improve the elasticity of one's muscles 

  • To extend to a limit point 

  • To sail by the wind under press of canvas. 

  • To make inaccurate by exaggeration. 

  • To increase. 

  • To extend physically, especially from limit point to limit point. 

noun
  • The ability to lengthen when pulled. 

  • An act of stretching. 

  • A jail or prison term. 

  • Term of address for a tall person. 

  • A segment of a journey or route. 

  • A length of time. 

  • Extended daylight hours, especially said of the evening in springtime when compared to the shorter winter days. 

  • The period of the season between the trade deadline and the beginning of the playoffs. 

  • A stretch limousine. 

  • The homestretch, the final straight section of the track leading to the finish. 

  • A jail or prison term of one year's duration. 

  • A course of thought which diverts from straightforward logic, or requires extraordinary belief or exaggeration. 

  • A segment or length of material. 

  • A long reach in the direction of the ball with a foot remaining on the base by a first baseman in order to catch the ball sooner. 

  • A single uninterrupted sitting; a turn. 

  • A quick pitching delivery used when runners are on base where the pitcher slides his leg instead of lifting it. 

How often have the words contract and stretch occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )