All 3 Uses

contract
in
The Hunt for Red October
(Auto-generated)

"Sir, if we followed normal procedure on this, we'd contract one of the Beltway Bandits—," Ryan referred to the consulting firms that dotted the beltway around Washington, D.C., "—they'd charge us five or ten times as much, and we'd be lucky to have the data by Easter.†
Chpt 4.
He was watching Jones as he had watched his wife when she'd had Dominic and he was timing the twitches on a needle as he had timed his wife's contractions.†
Chpt 11. *
This led to a contract from the Russians, and they asked for some information.†
Chpt 14. *

Definitions:

(1) (contract as in: legal contract)
an agreement - typically written and enforceable by law
(2) (contract as in: contract the disease)
to get -- especially in reference to a disease
(3) (contract as in: the metal contracted in the cold)
when something gets shorter or smaller
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
A grammatical sense of the word form contraction describes can't as a shortened form of can not.