Noun

(en noun)

The way in which something is positioned vis-à-vis its surroundings.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows) :

...he being naturally an underground animal by birth and breeding, the situation of Badger's house exactly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who slept every night in a bedroom the windows of which opened on a breezy river, naturally felt the atmosphere still and oppressive.

The place in which something is situated; a location.

* 1833 , Thomas Hibbert and Robert Buist, The American Flower Garden Directory , page 142:

[Hibíscus] speciòsus is the most splendid, and deserves a situation in every garden.

Position or status with regard to conditions and circumstances.

The combination of circumstances at a given moment; a state of affairs.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.}}

(UK, dated) A position of employment; a post.

* 1913 , , (Sons and Lovers) , Penguin 2006, page 78:

When he was nineteen, he suddenly left the 'Co-op' office, and got a situation in Nottingham.

* 1946 , Vaughn Horton, Denver Darling, Milt Gabler, :

You take a morning paper from the top of the stack

And read the situations from the front to the back

The only job that's open need a man with a knack

So put it right back in the rack Jack.

A difficult or unpleasant set of circumstances; a problem.

Boss, we've got a situation here...

Noun

An unexpected event with negative consequences occurring without the intention of the one suffering the consequences.

* c.1603 , (William Shakespeare), , I-iii,

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, / Of moving accidents by flood and field

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Philip J. Bushnell

, magazine=(American Scientist), title= Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance , passage=Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident . Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene, another solvent, which has the well-known property of causing this type of cancer.}}

Any chance event.

(uncountable) Chance.

* c.1861-1863 , (Richard Chevenix Trench), in 1888, Letters and memorials , Volume 1,

Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident , / It is the very place God meant for thee;

*

(transport, vehicle) An unintended event such as a collision that causes damage or death.

Any property, fact, or relation that is the result of chance or is nonessential.

* 1883 , , Social life in Greece from Homer to Menander? ,

This accident , as I call it, of Athens being situated some miles from the sea, which is rather the consequence of its being a very ancient site,

(euphemistic) An instance of incontinence.

* 2009 , Marcia Stedron, My Roller Coaster Life as an Army Wife , Xlibris Corporation, ISBN 1462817890, page 56:

We weren’t there long when Karin asked about our dog. When we told her Chris was in the car, she insisted we bring him up to the apartment. I rejected her offer and said he might have an accident on the carpet and I didn’t want to worry about it.

(euphemistic) An unintended pregnancy.

(philosophy, logic) A quality or attribute in distinction from the substance, as sweetness'', ''softness .

* 1902 , William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience , Folio Society 2008, page 171:

If they went through their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the change would be the same, its accidents would be different.

(grammar) A property attached to a word, but not essential to it, as gender, number, case.

(geology) An irregular surface feature with no apparent cause.

(heraldry) A point or mark which may be retained or omitted in a coat of arms.

(legal) casus; such unforeseen, extraordinary, extraneous interference as is out of the range of ordinary calculation.

(military) An unplanned event that results in injury (including death) or occupational illness to person(s) and/or damage to property, exclusive of injury and/or damage caused by action of an enemy or hostile force.

(uncountable, philosophy, uncommon) Appearance, manifestation.

* 14thC , (Geoffrey Chaucer), '' in ''(The Canterbury Tales) ,

These cookes how they stamp, and strain, and grind, / And turne substance into accident , / To fulfill all thy likerous talent!

* 1677 , Heraclitus Christianus: or, the Man of Sorrow , chapter 3, page 14:

But as to Man, all the Fruits of the Earth, all sorts of Herbs, Plants and Roots, the Fishes of the Sea, and the Birds of the Air do not suffice him, but he must disguise, vary, and sophisticate, change the substance into accident , that by such irritations as these, Nature might be provoked, and as it were necessitated.

* 1989 , Iysa A. Bello, The medieval Islamic controversy between philosophy and orthodoxy , page 55:

Nonetheless, those who have no evidence of the impossibility of the transformation of accident into substance believe that it is death itself which will be actually transformed into a ram on the Day of Resurrection and then be slaughtered.

* 2005 , Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Medieval Islamic philosophical writings , page 175:

It would also follow that God ought to be able to transmute genera, converting substance into accident , knowledge into ability, black into white, and sound into smell, just as he can turn the inanimate into animate

* 2010 , T. M. Rudavsky, Maimonides , page 142:

nor can God effect the transmutation of substances (from accident' into substance, or substance into '''accident''', or substance without ' accident ).