the.com/contraction
Two words fall in love, lose a few letters, and move in together.
means A shortened form made by squeezing two words together and dropping the missing letters into an apostrophe, or more generally, the act of shrinking something in size or length.
from From Latin contrahere — 'con-' (together) plus 'trahere' (to draw or pull), the same root that gives us 'traction' and 'tractor.' Literally, it means to pull things together until they're smaller than before — which is exactly what happens whether you're tightening a muscle, shrinking a contract, or squashing 'do not' down into 'don't.'
- apostrophe marks
- exactly where letters died
- ain't backstory
- once fine, now linguistically shunned
- won't origin
- from woll not, not will not
- speech default
- humans say contractions almost always