- incident[incident 词源字典]
- incident: [15] An incident is literally that which ‘befalls’. In common with accident and occident, and a wide range of other English words, from cadaver to occasion, it comes ultimately from Latin cadere ‘fall’. This was combined with the prefix in- ‘on’ to produce incidere ‘fall on’, hence ‘befall, happen to’. Its present participial stem incident- passed into English either directly or via French.
The use of a word that literally means ‘fall’ to denote the concept of ‘happening’ is quite a common phenomenon. It occurs also in befall and chance, and operates in other languages than English; Welsh digwydd ‘happen’, for instance, is derived from cwyddo ‘fall’.
=> accident, cadence, case, occasion[incident etymology, incident origin, 英语词源] - incident (n.)
- early 15c., "something which occurs casually in connection with something else," from Middle French incident and directly from Latin incidentem (nominative incidens), present participle of incidere "happen, befall," from in- "on" + -cidere, comb. form of cadere "to fall" (see case (n.1)). Sense of "an occurrence viewed as a separate circumstance" is from mid-15c. Meaning "event that might trigger a crisis or political unrest" first attested 1913.
- incident (adj.)
- "conducive (to), contributing (to)," early 15c., from Middle French incident (adj.) or directly from Latin
incidens, present participle of
incidere (see incident (n.)).