COVENANTS Synonyms: 84 Similar and Opposite Words

covenants 1 of 2

noun

plural of covenant

as in treaties

a formal agreement between two or more nations or peoples the two countries signed a peace covenant that, it was hoped, would put an end to decades of bitter conflict

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Relevance

as in contracts

a formal agreement to fulfill an obligation I had to sign a covenant that I would return the rental car on time

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as in agreements

an arrangement about action to be taken the covenant that existed among neighbors in olden times whereby they would quickly respond to the call to help put out one another's house fires

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covenants

2 of 2

verb

present tense third-person singular of covenant

as in bargains

to come to an arrangement as to a course of action a traditional rule held that a husband could not enter into a covenant with his wife, because that was the equivalent of covenanting with himself

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in promises

to make a solemn declaration of intent the home buyers had to covenant that they would restore and keep the house for at least 10 years in exchange for a low mortgage rate

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of covenants

Noun

For decades, discriminatory housing policies — including redlining, racially restrictive covenants and predatory land-sale contracts — systematically extracted the very wealth from Black families that fuels neighborhood investment. —

Tonika Lewis Johnson, Chicago Tribune, 22 Mar. 2026 Early 20th-century deed covenants explicitly barred Black, Chinese, or Japanese residents from buying or renting homes in the neighborhood. —

Shomik Mukherjee, Mercury News, 10 Mar. 2026 Yolo County officials have identified and modified more than 1,100 historic property records containing discriminatory covenants, some dating back more than a century. —

Daniel Lempres, Sacbee.com, 8 Mar. 2026 Black Detroiters were systematically excluded from quality neighborhoods by restrictive covenants embedded in property deeds. —

Anita Moncrease, The Conversation, 25 Feb. 2026 Jesse challenges fast-food chains into signing covenants with PUSH to hire and distribute proportionally to their black customers; Noah turns up with a chain of Wendy's, Bojangles, and Church's Fried Chicken in both Chicago and New York. —

Gail Sheehy, Vanity Fair, 20 Feb. 2026 The circa-1974 building’s facade and some interior spaces must be preserved in keeping with historic covenants tied to the property. —

Madison Iszler, San Antonio Express-News, 15 Jan. 2026 The covenants contained language in property deeds that prevented the sale of land or homes to Black people and people of other ethnicities to keep certain areas exclusively White. —

Kayla Huynh, jsonline.com, 14 Jan. 2026 The onerous covenants include, among others, restricting WBD’s ability to modify, renew or terminate affiliation agreements. —

Jill Goldsmith, Deadline, 7 Jan. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for covenants

Noun

But a series of court decisions in the past 50 years has given the executive branch more leeway to withdraw from treaties.

— Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 26 Mar. 2026
The world has spent 70 years building treaties, monitoring systems, and institutions to manage nuclear risk.

— Ashish K. Jha, STAT, 25 Mar. 2026