Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English homepage

Date: 1400-1500
Language: French
Origin: Latin, present participle of incidere 'to fall into'

incident

 noun
     
in‧ci‧dent W2 [countable]
1 an event, especially one that is unusual, important, or violent:
A spokesman said it was an isolated incident.
Am I at risk because of some incident in my sexual past?
shooting/stabbing incident
Many shooting incidents go unreported.
without incident
The plane landed without incident.
2 a serious disagreement between two countries:
You could have caused a major diplomatic incident.
Definition from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

Dictionary pictures of the day
Do you know what each of these is called?
What is the word for picture 1? What is the word for picture 2? What is the word for picture 3? What is the word for picture 4?
Click on any of the pictures above to find out what it is called.

Explore our topic dictionary

Browse the dictionary