1 [C] an unpleasant event, especially in a vehicle, that happens unexpectedly and causes injury or damage:
a car / road / traffic accident * He was killed in an accident. * One in seven accidents is caused by sleepy drivers. * The accident happened at 3 p.m. * to have an accident * a serious / minor accident * a fatal accident (= in which sb is killed) * accidents in the home * a climbing / riding accident * (BrE) the hospital accident and emergency department * Take out accident insurance before you go on your trip. * I didn't mean to break it-it was an accident.
2 [C,U] something that happens unexpectedly and is not planned in advance:
Their early arrival was just an accident. * It is no accident that men fill most of the top jobs in nursing. * an accident of birth / fate / history (= describing facts and events that are due to chance or circumstances)
IDIOMS
accidents will happen people say accidents will happen to tell sb who has had an accident, for example breaking sth, that it does not matter and they should not worry
by accident in a way that is not planned or organized:
We met by accident at the airport. * Helen got into acting purely by accident.
moreatCHAPTER, WAITv.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for accident is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is accident a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, accident is tagged as noun.
Does accident appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — accident appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
