 |
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Contingency \Con*tin"gen*cy\, noun; pl. {Contingencies}. [Cf. F. contingence.]
1. Union or connection; the state of touching or contact. ''Point of contingency.'' --J. Gregory.
2. The quality or state of being contingent or casual; the possibility of coming to pass.
Aristotle says we are not to build certain rules on the contingency of human actions. --South.
3. An event which may or may not occur; that which is possible or probable; a fortuitous event; a chance.
The remarkable position of the queen rendering her death a most important contingency. --Hallam.
4. An adjunct or accessory. --Wordsworth.
5. (Law) A certain possible event that may or may not happen, by which, when happening, some particular title may be affected.
Syn: Casualty; accident; chance.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
contingency
noun
1: a possible event or occurrence or result [syn: {eventuality}, {contingence}]
2: the state of being contingent on something
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
115 Moby Thesaurus words for "contingency": accessory, accident, accidental, addendum, addition, adjunct, adventure, appendage, appurtenance, aptitude, aptness, auxiliary, bare possibility, blind bargain, borderline case, break, casualty, chance, chance hit, circumstance, collateral, coming to be, conceivability, conceivableness, condition, conjuncture, contingent, correlation, crisis, crossroads, dependence, double contingency, emergency, even chance, event, eventuality, eventuation, exigency, extra, fluke, fortuity, freak accident, gamble, good chance, good possibility, guess, hap, happening, happenstance, hazard, hope, incidence, incident, incidental, inessential, interrelation, juncture, liability, liableness, likelihood, likeliness, long odds, long shot, lucky shot, materialization, mere chance, nonessential, not-self, obligation, occasion, occurrence, off chance, open question, opportunity, other, outside chance, outside hope, pass, piece of guesswork, pinch, possibility, possibleness, potential, potentiality, probability, proneness, prospect, question, realization, relativity, remote possibility, secondary, sight-unseen transaction, small hope, strait, subsidiary, superaddition, supplement, the attainable, the feasible, the possible, thinkability, thinkableness, toss-up, touch and go, turning point, undecided issue, unessential, virtuality, wager, weakness, what is possible, what may be, what might be, zero hour
 |
Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |