Other forms: contingencies
A contingency is a plan kept ready in case things go wrong. A contingency plan, contingency funds, plan for every contingency.
In budgeting it is money set aside for what nobody has thought of, and the standard advice is ten per cent — a project without a contingency will find one anyway. The word properly means something that may or may not happen. The Latin means touching together.
1nouncontingencyA plan kept ready in case things go wrong.
“We have a contingency ready in case the main speaker cancels.”
contingency is a plan.
From contingence plus -y, from Latin contingere, to touch or befall — com- plus tangere, to touch.
From contingence + -y (16th century).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA