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.)).
双语例句
1. A member of the security forces was killed in a sniping incident.
有一名安全部队成员在一场狙击战中被打死。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The violation of the graves is not the first such incident.
像这种破坏墓地的行为不是第一次出现了。
来自柯林斯例句
3. His abhorrence of racism led him to write The Algiers Motel Incident.
对种族主义的憎恨促使他写了《阿尔及尔汽车旅馆事件》一书。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The idea that she witnessed this shameful incident meant nothing to him.
虽然她目睹了这可耻的一幕，但是这对他来说无关紧要。
来自柯林斯例句
5. The incident brings the total of people killed to fifteen.
