incident: [15] An incident is literally that which ‘befalls’. In common with accident and occident, and a wide range of other English words, from cadaver to occasion, it comes ultimately from Latin cadere ‘fall’. This was combined with the prefix in- ‘on’ to produce incidere ‘fall on’, hence ‘befall, happen to’. Its present participial stem incident- passed into English either directly or via French.
The use of a word that literally means ‘fall’ to denote the concept of ‘happening’ is quite a common phenomenon. It occurs also in befall and chance, and operates in other languages than English; Welsh digwydd ‘happen’, for instance, is derived from cwyddo ‘fall’. => accident, cadence, case, occasion
incident (n.)
early 15c., "something which occurs casually in connection with something else," from Middle French incident and directly from Latin incidentem (nominative incidens), present participle of incidere "happen, befall," from in- "on" + -cidere, comb. form of cadere "to fall" (see case (n.1)). Sense of "an occurrence viewed as a separate circumstance" is from mid-15c. Meaning "event that might trigger a crisis or political unrest" first attested 1913.
incident (adj.)
"conducive (to), contributing (to)," early 15c., from Middle French incident (adj.) or directly from Latin
incidens, present participle of
incidere (see incident (n.)).
雙語例句
1. A member of the security forces was killed in a sniping incident.
有一名安全部隊成員在一場狙擊戰中被打死。
來自柯林斯例句
2. The violation of the graves is not the first such incident.
像這種破壞墓地的行為不是第一次出現了。
來自柯林斯例句
3. His abhorrence of racism led him to write The Algiers Motel Incident.
對種族主義的憎恨促使他寫了《阿爾及爾汽車旅館事件》一書。
來自柯林斯例句
4. The idea that she witnessed this shameful incident meant nothing to him.
雖然她目睹了這可恥的一幕，但是這對他來說無關緊要。
來自柯林斯例句
5. The incident brings the total of people killed to fifteen.