Accident

How to spell accident

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce accident

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accident mean?

1. nounAn unfortunate event that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, often causing damage or injury.
2. nounSomething that happens by chance, without deliberate planning.

Accident in a sentence

• The motorway was closed for hours after a serious accident.

• Meeting his old colleague at the airport was a happy accident.

• She broke her wrist in a skiing accident last winter.

• The discovery of the recipe was a complete accident in the kitchen.

Where does accident come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb accidere, meaning 'to happen' or, more literally, 'to fall toward' or 'to fall upon', formed from the prefix ad- ('to, toward') and cadere ('to fall'). The present participle accidens described a thing that happens or befalls, and in philosophical Latin it even named a non-essential property, something that merely 'falls to' a substance rather than defining it. English took the word in during the late 1300s by way of Old French, where it carried the sense of a chance event or occurrence. Over time the everyday meaning narrowed toward the unlucky, unplanned mishaps we mean today. The same cadere root that gives us the falling idea also sits inside 'cascade', 'decadent', and 'coincidence', and remembering that buried Latin cadere helps fix the single d and the -ent ending in spelling.

How the word is built

• ac- (assimilated form of ad-: toward)
• cid (from Latin cadere: to fall)
• -ent (noun suffix)