happenstance


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hap·pen·stance

 (hăp′ən-stăns′)
n.
A chance circumstance: "I drove loops around the nearby parish school ... hoping to bump into her casually and claim it was mere happenstance" (Hart Seely).

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

happenstance

(ˈhæpənˌstæns)
n
1. chance
2. a chance occurrence
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

hap•pen•stance

(ˈhæp ənˌstæns)

n.
a chance happening or event.
[1895–1900; happen + (circum) stance]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.happenstance - an event that might have been arranged although it was really accidental
chance event, fortuity, accident, stroke - anything that happens suddenly or by chance without an apparent cause; "winning the lottery was a happy accident"; "the pregnancy was a stroke of bad luck"; "it was due to an accident or fortuity"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

happenstance

noun
An unexpected random event:
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Translations

happenstance

[ˈhæpənstæns] N (US) → casualidad f
by happenstancepor casualidad
Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

happenstance

n (inf)Zufall m; by happenstancedurch Zufall, zufällig
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

happenstance

[ˈhæpnˌstæns] n (Am) (fam) → combinazione f
Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995
References in periodicals archive ?
In support of our first hypothesis, career decision self-efficacy fully mediated the relationship between happenstance skills and career satisfaction.
The final chapter analyzes oI Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,o a true folk piece given an author only by the happenstance of the first recording.
Thrown together by sheer happenstance, their lives will be entwined for decades to come.
In Like a Beggar, her prose moseys along, skillfully detailing tightly framed shots, one right after another, and then "a boy on a bicycle rides by." Hopalong happenstance.
Among the topics addressed in 12 contributions: the secular and the spiritual in Gordimer's post-apartheid fiction, narrative dynamics in The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid Winterbach, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Suzman's The Free State, and nature and refuges in some Afrikaans narratives.
"It was not chance or happenstance that each of these eight men were in these vehicles being driven around and around on the same roads in the same area for hour after hour.
By happenstance, the company was later named Tyneside and Northumberland Company of the Year in the nebusiness awards 2012 which, of course, are organised by this newspaper and its partners.
While the makers say otherwise, the sheer combination of luck and happenstance seem just too good to be true.
Peter Orandbois's meta-memoir takes its title from the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who once warned that intelligence is "the enemy of poetry," making the poet forget "that ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall suddenly on his head:' Lorca's warning suggests the happenstance of any artist's life, the contingencies that can hobble or inspire the act of creation, or do both at once, as is often the case in Grandbois's narrated experiences.
"Harrietta's Happenstance" is the story of Harrietta Eastmont a woman with a dark secret and a shameful family.
Presenting evidence that the prohibition movement in Indiana was not happenstance or abnormal, but rather an effect of the mainstream cultural currents of the era, "Prohibition Is Here to Stay" uses Indiana as a lens to further examine larger issues of America's transformation from a rural to an urban majority, as well as the consequent shift in cultural values and the repercussions of industrialization and foreign immigration.
peer beneath The veil of pointless happenstance. Here is someone able to