Noun

Singular accident

Plural accidents

accident (plural accidents)

1. Literally, a befalling; an event that takes place without one's foresight or expectation; an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event; often, an undesigned and unforeseen occurrence of an afflictive or unfortunate character

   to die by an accident

   • Shakespeare, Othello, I-iii:

     Of moving accidents by flood and field.

   • Trench:

     Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident: It is the very place God meant for thee.

2. (grammar) A property attached to a word, but not essential to it, as gender, number, case.
3. (military) An unplanned event that results in injury (including death) or occupational illness to person(s) and/or damage to property, exclusive of injury and/or damage caused by action of an enemy or hostile force.
4. (heraldry) A point or mark which may be retained or omitted in a coat of arms
5. (logic) A quality or attribute in distinction from the substance, as sweetness, softness.
   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society 2008, p. 171:

     If they went through their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the change would be the same [...], its accidents would be different.

6. Any accidental property, fact, or relation; an accidental or nonessential

   Beauty is an accident.

   • J. P. Mahaffy:

     This accident, as I call it, of Athens being situated some miles from the sea.

7. (obsolete) Unusual appearance or effect - Geoffrey Chaucer
8. (law) casus; such unforeseen, extraordinary, extraneous interference as is out of the range of ordinary calculation.
9. (automotive) An unintended collision.

   There was a huge accident on I5 involving 15 automobiles.

   My insurance is expenive now, mostly because of those two accidents.

Synonyms

• (event that takes place without foresight or expectation): befalling, chance, contingency, casualty, mishap

Derived terms

• accidental
• freak accident

Related terms

• accidentally

An accident is a specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, without apparent or deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative probabilistic outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence.

Narrowly defined, the designation may refer only to the event, while not including the circumstances (facts surrounding) or results of the event; i.e., ‘accident’ is constrained to an immediate incident, the occurrence of which results in an unplanned outcome. In common use, however, ‘accident’ may include the entire interacting circumstantial framework (chance, pre-existing, or uncontrolled dynamically developing conditions; commonplace actions; random time and place; participants; etc.) leading up to, including, and resulting from, the accident's immediate occurrence.

Physical examples include, e.g., unintended collisions or falls, being injured by touching something sharp, hot, or electrical, or ingesting poison. Non-physical examples are, e.g., unintentionally revealing a secret or otherwise saying something incorrectly, forgetting an appointment, etc.

Experts in the field of injury prevention avoid use of the term 'accident' to describe events that cause injury in an attempt to highlight the predictable and preventable nature of most injuries. Such incidents are viewed from the perspective of epidemiology - predictable and preventable. Preferred words are more descriptive of the event itself, rather than of its unintended nature (e.g., crash, collision, incident, drowning, fall, etc.)

Accidents of particularly common types (auto, fire, etc.) are investigated to identify how to avoid them in the future. This is sometimes called root cause analysis, but does not generally apply to accidents that cannot be deterministically predicted. A root cause of an uncommon and purely random accident may never be identified, and thus future similar accidents remain "accidental."

The informal term "freak accident" typically refers to an unfortunate and improbable event that seems exceedingly unlikely to happen by chance. In extreme contexts, the term may also imply doubt, ambiguity or suspicion about an accident event's cause.

Colloquially considered negative, 'happy' accidents with positive results are also possible.