contiguous

adjective con·tig·u·ous \ kən-ˈti-gyə-wəs , -gyü-əs \

|Updated on: 7 Jul 2018

Tip: Synonym Guide

Examples: contiguous in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of contiguous

1 : being in actual contact : touching along a boundary or at a point

the 48 contiguous states

2 of angles : adjacent 2

3 : next or near in time or sequence

The fires were contiguous with the earthquake.

4 : touching or connected throughout in an unbroken sequence

contiguous row houses

contiguous vineyards

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contiguously

adverb

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contiguousness

noun

See contiguous defined for English-language learners

See contiguous defined for kids

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Examples of contiguous in a Sentence

And in the west, contiguous to Lebanon, was the mountain stronghold of Latakia … —Robert D. Kaplan, Atlantic, February 1993
The Santa Monica Mountains, a sort of foot-note to the big contiguous ranges, stood off to the southwest of us, discrete and small. —John McPhee, New Yorker, 26 Sept. 1988
'I've had my men looking into the land situation … and they think they could get us an additional thirty thousand acres, not all of it contiguous but we might make some trades.' —James A. Michener, Texas, 1985
Connecticut and Massachusetts are contiguous states.

Recent Examples of contiguous from the Web

There's a swath of central Asia bigger than the contiguous United States that's endorheic, stretching from Turkey all the way to eastern Mongolia.

— ken jennings, Condé Nast Traveler, "The Aral Sea Is Refilling for the First Time in Decades," 25 June 2018
Nineteen of them are now stationed close to the geographic center of the contiguous United States, in the desolate farmland of central Missouri, at Whiteman Air Force Base.

— william langewiesche, The Atlantic, "An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS," 21 June 2018
Kevin Costner plays the patriarch of a fourth generation Montana ranching family trying to hold together the largest contiguous ranch in the United States.

— National Geographic, "Yellowstone: A Place, A Drama," 18 June 2018
The Bald Eagle’s range includes most of Canada, Alaska, all of the contiguous United States and northern Mexico.

— cassie armstrong, OrlandoSentinel.com, "American Eagle Day: How to observe in Central Florida," 19 June 2018
South central Colorado, the climate division just outside Salida, has warmed 1.2 degrees on average since 1988, among the warmest divisions in the contiguous United States.

— Fox News, "NASA's chilling 30-year-old warning," 19 June 2018
South central Colorado, the climate division just outside Salida, has warmed 2.3 degrees on average since 1988, among the warmest divisions in the contiguous United States.

— seth borenstein and nicky forster, Cincinnati.com, "Warned 30 years ago, global warming 'is in our living room'," 18 June 2018
Last month was the warmest May on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with above-average temperatures in all 48 contiguous states.

— paul kiernan, WSJ, "U.S. Industrial Production Unexpectedly Declined in May," 15 June 2018
Chevrolet worked with a data scientist, Randy Olson, to calculate the most efficient road trip route around the U.S., with one family-friendly stop in each of the 48 contiguous states.

— beth j. harpaz, Houston Chronicle, "Old-fashioned road trips are trending," 8 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'contiguous.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the word contact is a relative of contiguous, but would you believe that contagion and contingent are too? All of those words derive from the Latin contingere, meaning "to have contact with." The words contact and contiguous are fairly easy to connect with contingere, but what of the other two? In its early use, contingent was a synonym of "touching," and if you remember that touching something can pollute it (and that another meaning of contingere was "to pollute"), then contagion logically ties in, too.

Origin and Etymology of contiguous

Latin contiguus, from contingere to have contact with — more at contingent

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: circa 1609

in the meaning defined at sense 1

See Words from the same year

contiguous Synonyms

Synonym Discussion of contiguous

adjacent, adjoining, contiguous, juxtaposed mean being in close proximity. adjacent may or may not imply contact but always implies absence of anything of the same kind in between.