accident

Word family

• accidental
  adjectiveB2
• accidentally
  adverbB1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All five words describe unwanted events, but they differ in scale and tone. 'Accident' is the everyday, neutral word for harm caused without intention — covering anything from a spilled drink to a car wreck. 'Crash' is narrower: it almost always means a vehicle collision, and it sounds more vivid and dramatic. 'Mishap' is gentler and slightly formal, used for small, embarrassing problems with no lasting damage ('a minor mishap on the way to the airport'). 'Disaster' is reserved for large-scale events affecting many people, often in the news. 'Incident' is deliberately vague and official-sounding, common in police or company reports where the speaker does not want to assign blame. Compare: 'a small accident in the kitchen' (everyday harm), 'a three-car crash' (vehicle-specific), 'a minor mishap' (trivial), 'a national disaster' (huge scale).

Common collocations

Etymology

The word entered English in the late 14th century from Old French 'accident', which came from the Latin noun 'accidens', the present participle of 'accidere' meaning 'to fall upon, happen'. That Latin verb is built from 'ad-' ('to') plus 'cadere' ('to fall'), so the literal sense is 'something that falls onto you'. The original meaning in English was simply 'a chance event' (still alive in sense 2, 'by accident'); the modern sense of an unwanted, harmful event grew dominant only from the 17th century onward.