contíguo

Contíguo is an adjective used in Spanish and Portuguese to describe objects, areas, or concepts that touch each other or share a common boundary. It conveys immediate proximity, with no gap between the elements, and can refer to physical adjacency as well as abstract contiguity, such as neighboring regions or adjoining intervals.

Etymology: Contíguo derives from Latin contiguus, formed from con- "together" and tangere "to touch." The standard modern spellings in Spanish and Portuguese are contiguo (or contíguo in some historical or dialectal variants), but contíguo with an accent is not common in contemporary orthography and may be used only to mark pronunciation in certain dictionaries.

Usage across fields: In geography and cartography, contiguidad or contiguos describes regions that share a border, as in los estados contiguos. In computing, memoria contigua refers to memory allocated in a single continuous block, with consecutive addresses. In mathematics and logic, the concept of contiguidad is used to express adjacency or lack of gaps between elements, though terminology often overlaps with terms like adjacent or connected depending on the context.

Orthography and variants: The form contíguo with an accent is generally not standard in modern Spanish or Portuguese, where contiguo is preferred. The related noun contiguidad (contiguity) is used to discuss the property of being contiguous in a more abstract sense, including spatial, temporal, or conceptual proximity.

See also: contiguidad, contiguity, adjacency, contiguous memory, adjacent.