Word.ws English Dictionary

design by contract

design by contract noun: a software design approach that prescribes formal, precise and verifiable interface specifications (contracts) with preconditions, postconditions, and invariants.

Noun

design by contract (uncountable)

  1. A software design approach that prescribes formal, precise and verifiable interface specifications (contracts) with preconditions, postconditions, and invariants.

Synonyms of design by contract

Origin of design by contract

Coined by French computer scientist Bertrand Meyer.

Questions about design by contract

What does design by contract mean?
Design by contract means a software design approach that prescribes formal, precise and verifiable interface specifications (contracts) with preconditions, postconditions, and invariants.
What part of speech is design by contract?
Design by contract is a noun.

Words near design by contract in the dictionary

  1. desight
  2. desightment
  3. desights
  4. design
  5. design and release engineer
  6. design by contract
  7. design code
  8. design codes
  9. design depth
  10. design depths
  11. design fiction

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: design by contract (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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