Happen
verbTo take place or occur, often without being planned.
How to spell happen
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce happen
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does happen mean?
- verbTo take place or occur, often without being planned.
Happen in a sentence
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Accidents often happen when drivers are tired.
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Nobody could explain how the error came to happen.
Where does happen come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
The word grew out of the Middle English noun 'hap', meaning chance, luck, or fortune, which English borrowed from the Old Norse 'happ' with the same sense of good luck. Around the 1300s, English speakers added the verb-forming ending '-en' to produce 'happenen', literally 'to come about by chance'. Over time the element of luck faded, and the verb settled into its modern meaning of simply occurring or taking place. The same little root 'hap' survives in everyday relatives such as 'happy' (originally 'lucky'), 'mishap', 'haphazard', and 'perhaps'. Because the word is spelled with the doubled 'p' inherited from that short root vowel, the trap for writers is remembering the single 'p' is wrong: it is hap-pen, with two.
How the word is built
- hap (chance, luck)
- -en (verb suffix)
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