ACCIDENT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Accident

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/ˈæksədənt/ Listen

noun

Accident n.

1.

Literally, a befalling; an event that takes place without one's foresight or expectation; an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event; chance; contingency; often, an undesigned and unforeseen occurrence of an afflictive or unfortunate character; a casualty; a mishap; as, to die by an accident. "Of moving accidents by flood and field." "Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident: It is the very place God meant for thee."

2.

(Gram.) A property attached to a word, but not essential to it, as gender, number, case.

3.

(Her.) A point or mark which may be retained or omitted in a coat of arms.

4.

(Log.)

(a)

A property or quality of a thing which is not essential to it, as whiteness in paper; an attribute.

(b)

A quality or attribute in distinction from the substance, as sweetness, softness.

5.

Any accidental property, fact, or relation; an accidental or nonessential; as, beauty is an accident. "This accident, as I call it, of Athens being situated some miles from the sea."

6.

Unusual appearance or effect. (Obs.) Note: Accident, in Law, is equivalent to casus, or such unforeseen, extraordinary, extraneous interference as is out of the range of ordinary calculation.

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Etymology of 'Accident'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Accident" Quotes from Famous Books

... prince who holds a country differing in the above respects ought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful neighbours, and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing there; for it will always happen that such a one will be introduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of ambition or through fear, as one has seen already. The Romans were brought into Greece by the Aetolians; and ...

— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more direct and more deep. It was Strether's belief that he had been comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the first effects of the migration would not have been, without some particular bad accident, to have been deplored. There had been three months—he had sufficiently figured it out—in which Chad had wanted to try. He HAD tried, though not very hard—he had had his little hour of good faith. The weakness of this principle in him was that ...

— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes. If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:— 'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, ...

— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... at the point where the helve meets the steel. The blade was driven deep in the oak wood. I suppose I should have regretted my foolishness, but I did not. The handle was old and somewhat worn, and the accident gave me an indefinable satisfaction: the culmination of use, that final destruction which is the ...

— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... St. Petersburg. However, not only the hatred against the Jews but also the fury of general political reaction became more rabid than ever after the "miraculous escape" of the imperial family in the railroad accident near Borki on October 17, 1888. [1] Amidst the ecclesiastic and mystic haze with which Pobyedonostzev and his associates managed to veil this episode the conviction became deeply ingrained in the mind of the Tzar that it was the finger of God which pointed to him the way ...

— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

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