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occurrence

UK/əˈkʌɹ.əns/US/əˈkɜɹ.əns/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,749 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: occurrences

An occurrence is something that happens. A rare occurrence, a common occurrence, the occurrence of the fault.

It is neutral and formal, which is why reports use it: an occurrence is an event with no judgement attached. Note the spelling, with two c's and two r's, which is one of the commonest misspellings in English.

Definitions of occurrence

  1. 1nounoccurrenceSomething that happens.C1

    “Power cuts are a common occurrence in the village during winter storms.”

occurrence is an event.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin occurrentia comes from occurrere, to run towards or befall — ob plus currere, to run.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱers-

  2. Medieval Latin

    occurrentia

  3. Middle French

    occurrence

  4. English, today

    occurrence

From Middle French occurrence, from Medieval Latin occurrentia. Morphologically occur + ence.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

occurrence in the wild

  • Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time.

    Frequency

  • A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

    Sign

  • The occurrence of information biases may not be independent of the occurrence of selection biases. 2.

    Information bias (epidemiology)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • occur