Noun

(en noun)

A favorable opportunity; a convenient or timely chance.

* Bible, Rom. vii. 11

Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me.

* Waller

I'll take the occasion which he gives to bring / Him to his death.

The time when something happens.

*, chapter=13

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.}}

An occurrence or state of affairs which causes some event or reaction; a motive or reason.

Something which causes something else; a cause.

* 1624 , John Smith, Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 130:

it were too vile to say, and scarce to be beleeved, what we endured: but the occasion was our owne, for want of providence, industrie and government [...].

(obsolete) An occurrence or incident.

A particular happening; an instance or time when something occurred.

*{{quote-news, year=2013, date=April 9, author=Andrei Lankov, title=Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff., work=New York Times citation

, passage=In the last two decades, North Korea has on various occasions conducted highly provocative missile and nuclear tests and promised to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. }}

Need; requirement, necessity.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2 , passage=I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.}}

* Jeremy Taylor

after we have served ourselves and our own occasions

* Burke

when my occasions took me into France

A special event or function.

A reason or excuse; a motive; a persuasion.

* Spenser

Whose manner was, all passengers to stay, / And entertain with her occasions sly.

Noun

(uncountable) The quality of being organized.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}

(uncountable) The way in which something is organized, such as a book or an article.

(countable) A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.

(countable) A group of people consciously cooperating.

(baseball) A major league club and all its farm teams.