contrive

1. 1.

   make or work out a plan for; devise

   “They contrived to murder their boss”

   “design a new sales strategy”

   “plan an attack”

   Synonymsplanprojectdesign

   Broadercreate by mental act

   Narrowerplotconcertmap
2. 2.

   come up with (an idea, plan, explanation, theory, or principle) after a mental effort

   “excogitate a way to measure the speed of light”

   Synonymsinventdeviseexcogitateformulateforge

   Broadercreate by mental act
3. 3.

   put or send forth

   “She threw the flashlight beam into the corner”

   “The setting sun threw long shadows”

   “cast a spell”

   “cast a warm light”

   Synonymsprojectcastthrow

   Broadersend

   Narrowershoot

Other forms of contrive

past tense

contrived·

present participle

contriving·

third person

contrives·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about contrive

What does contrive mean?

contrive means "make or work out a plan for; devise". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in contrive?

contrive has 2 syllables: con-trive. The stress falls on "trive". In IPA it is /kənˈtɹaɪv/.

What is another word for contrive?

Close synonyms include plan, project, design, invent, devise. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is contrive a common word?

contrive is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.