Word of the week: "contingent"

Source: "Tiger Woods spits on green, golf world splits in prissy fits" by Jay Busbee, 14 Feb. 2011.

Sentence: "But this is going to be turned into another one of those "Tiger doesn't respect the game" rants by the anti-Tiger contingent, and that's unfortunate."

Definition: —adjective (when post-positive, often foll by on or upon) 1. dependent on events, conditions, etc, not yet known; conditional. 2. logic (of proposition) true under certain conditions, false under others; not necessary. 3. (in systemic grammar) denoting contingency. 4. metaphysics (of some being) existing only as a matter of fact; not necessarily existing. 5. happening by chance or without known cause; accidental. 6. that may or may not happen; uncertain. — noun 7. a part of a military force, parade, etc. 8. a representative group distinguished by common origin, interest, etc, that is part of a larger group or gathering. 9. a possible or chance occurrence ("contingent").

Although I've heard this word many times, I never really stopped to think about its various meanings, and as you can see from the definitions above, "contingent" has up to nine meanings and can be used as an adjective or a noun. In the sentence from Busbee's article, the word is clearly used as a noun to mean "a representative group distinguished by a common origin, interest, etc," and that interest is not liking Tiger Woods.

Work Cited

Busbee, Jay. "Tiger Woods spits on green, golf world splits in prissy fits." Yahoo! Sports: Golf. Yahoo!, 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.

"contingent." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC, 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.