When a company has a job to do and pays another company to do part of it, we say the first company subcontracts that part. A building firm wins the contract to build a school, then subcontracts the electrical work, the windows, and the painting to smaller firms. The first firm still answers to the customer for the whole thing — that is the point. It has not handed the job away; it has quietly bought help underneath itself. The word is a verb ('they subcontracted the cleaning to a local company') and also a noun ('the electrical subcontract'), and as a noun it means the smaller agreement that sits under the main one. The two are said differently, which surprises learners: as a verb the stress falls at the end, sub-con-TRACT, while as a noun it tends to move forward, SUB-contract. You will meet this word most in business, construction, government projects, and news stories about who was really responsible when something went wrong — because subcontracting is exactly where responsibility gets blurry. That is why it often carries a faint smell of criticism in reporting, even though the word itself is neutral: it is a completely normal, legal, everyday way to organise work. Common patterns: subcontract something to somebody, subcontract out (the work was subcontracted out).