emergency
Pluralemergencies
- 1A situation that poses an immediate risk and needs urgent attention.
Firefighters train for every kind of emergency they might face.
During the emergency, the hospital called in extra staff overnight.
UsageOften in an emergency or in case of emergency, and before nouns: emergency exit, emergency services. Not the same as emergent.
- 2The hospital department that treats people needing urgent care.
The patient was rushed to emergency with severe chest pains.
Nurses in emergency treat the most urgent cases first.
UsageUsually no article: rushed to emergency, a nurse in emergency. In an emergency means in a crisis, anywhere.
Similarcasualty
Note
Green Day's song "Restless Heart Syndrome" (2009) has its singer plead to be taken to emergency, with no article before the noun, the way one goes to school or to bed.
- 3A pressing, critical need to urinate or defecate.
Twenty minutes into the hike, with no restroom in sight, the toddler announced that she had an emergency and needed to go right now.
A sudden emergency sent her hurrying to the nearest restroom.
UsageOften have an emergency or a bathroom emergency; without that setting, listeners may hear a real crisis.
Less common meanings
- 4A sudden or unexpected appearance or occurrence; the quality of emerging unforeseen.
Note
This archaic sense keeps closest to its Latin source: Medieval Latin emergentia, from emergens, "arising, coming forth." Here an emergency is simply something that surfaces unforeseen, with no implication of danger. Today the crisis sense has taken over.
- 5A person brought in at short notice to replace an absent staff member, player, or the like.
Practice
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Origin
Latin emergo ("to emerge, arise, come forth") had the present participle emergens, and Medieval Latin built emergentia on it; English borrowed that word. It is a doublet of emergence.