contain
/kənˈteɪn/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.50 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The brown box contains three stacks of books."
- "a spray bottle containing water."
- "At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors. […] In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass."
- "[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria,[…]."
- "Most of the meals they offer contain meat."
- "Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *ten- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *tn̥eh₁yéti Proto-Italic *tenēō Latin teneō Latin contineōder. Latin continērelbor. Old French contenirbor. Middle English conteinen English contain From Middle English conteinen, borrowed from Old French contenir, from Latin continēre (“to hold or keep together, comprise, contain”), combined form of con- (“together”) + teneō (“to hold”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: conteinen, contenir, continēre