Other forms: occasions
An occasion is a particular time when something happens, and often a special one. A wedding, a farewell, a birthday with everybody there.
The plain sense is simply a time, as in on one occasion, and the special sense is what makes a big occasion. It gives us on occasion, meaning sometimes, and a sense of occasion, meaning the feeling that this matters. There is a formal verb meaning to cause, as in the delay occasioned by the weather. Rising to the occasion means performing well when it counts.
1nounoccasionA particular time when something happens.~50%
“I have met him on two occasions.”
2nounspecialA special event or celebration.~50%
“They saved the good glasses for a big occasion.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 26 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
An occasion is something that falls your way. Latin occāsiō is built on cadō, to fall, with ob, down or away, which is the same falling that gives us case.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱh₂d-
Latin
occāsiō
Old French
occasiun
Middle French
occasion
Middle English
occasioun
English, today
occasion
Built from
From Middle English occasioun, from Middle French occasion, from Old French occasiun, from Latin occāsiō, noun of action from perfect passive participle occāsus, from verb occidō, from prefix ob- (“down", "away”) + verb cadō (“fall”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA