Contig: Number of uses, all nouns. The term comes from the shortening of the word 'contiguous'. A 'contig' might refer to the map showing placement of a set of clones which completely, contiguously cover some segment of the DNA in which you are interested. It is also called the 'minimal tiling path'. More frequently, the term 'contig' is used to refer to the final product of a shotgun sequencing the project. When the individual lanes of the sequence information are merged to infer sequence of the larger DNA piece, the product consensus the sequence is called a 'contig'.