occurrence
Pluraloccurrences
- 1An event or happening; a single instance when a situation takes place.
The committee treated the data breach as an isolated occurrence.
Sightings of the rare bird were daily occurrences that spring.
Similarevent, happening, incident
Note
Built in English terms from occur plus -ence, the word reached English through Middle French occurrence and Medieval Latin occurrentia, and it keeps the French spelling, doubled r included. The noun readily takes a frequency word in front of it. The Economist in 2013 called haze in South-East Asia an almost annual occurrence, and daily or isolated occurrence follow the same pattern.
- 2The lexical aspect of verbs or predicates that describe a change in or over time.
Linguists classify "ripen" as an occurrence, since it encodes a change of state across time.
Telic occurrences contrast with states, which involve no internal change.
Note
A term of art in the study of lexical aspect, where verbs and predicates are sorted by how they unfold in time. As Nick Riemer's Introducing Semantics (2010) puts it, the basic split is between states and occurrences. Vendler then divided occurrences into finer types, among them achievements and activities. Unlike the everyday "event" sense, the term classifies a predicate such as ran or ripen, not a particular happening.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle French occurrence, from Medieval Latin occurrentia; it can also be analysed as occur plus the suffix -ence.