event

See also: évent

English

Etymology 1

From Middle French event, from Latin ēventus (“an event, occurrence”), from ēveniō (“to happen, to fall out, to come out”), from ē (“out of, from”), short form of ex + veniō (“come”); related to venture, advent, convent, invent, convene, evene, etc.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪˈvɛnt/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛnt

Noun

event (plural events)

  1. An occurrence; something that happens.
    • Macaulay
      the events of his early years
  2. One of several contests that combine to make up a competition.
  3. An end result; an outcome (now chiefly in phrases).
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, partition 2, section 3, member 3:
      hard beginnings have many times prosperous events […].
    • 1707, Semele, by Eccles and Congrieve; scene 8
      Of my ill boding Dream / Behold the dire Event.
    • Young
      dark doubts between the promise and event
    In the event, he turned out to have what I needed anyway.
  4. (physics) A point in spacetime having three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate.
  5. (computing) A possible action that the user can perform that is monitored by an application or the operating system (event listener). When an event occurs an event handler is called which performs a specific task.
  6. (probability theory) A set of some of the possible outcomes; a subset of the sample space.
    If is a random variable representing the toss of a six-sided die, then its sample space could be denoted as {1,2,3,4,5,6}. Examples of events could be: , , and .
  7. (obsolete) An affair in hand; business; enterprise.
    • Shakespeare
      Leave we him to his events.
  8. (medicine) An episode of severe health conditions.
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Further reading
  • event in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • event in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Verb

event (third-person singular simple present events, present participle eventing, simple past and past participle evented)

  1. (obsolete) To occur, take place.
    • 1590, Robert Greene, Greene’s Never Too Late, in The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, Volume 8, Huff Library, 1881, p. 33,
      […] I will first rehearse you an English Historie acted and evented in my Countrey of England […]

Etymology 2

From French éventer

Verb

event (third-person singular simple present events, present participle eventing, simple past and past participle evented)

  1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be emitted or breathed out; to evaporate.
    • c. 1597, Ben Jonson, The Case is Altered, Act V, Scene 8, in C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (editors), Ben Jonson, Volume 3, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, p. 178,
      ô that thou sawst my heart, or didst behold
      The place from whence that scalding sigh evented.
    • 1615, William Barclay, Callirhoe; commonly called The Well of Spa or The Nymph of Aberdene, Aberdeen, 1799, p. 12,
      This is the reason why this water hath no such force when it is carried, as it hath at the spring it self: because the vertue of it consisteth in a spiritual and occulte qualitie, which eventeth and vanisheth by the carriage.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To expose to the air, ventilate.
    • 1559, attributed to William Baldwin, “How the Lorde Clyfford for his straunge and abhominable cruelty came to as straunge and sodayne a death” in The Mirror for Magistrates, Part III, edited by Joseph Haslewood, London: Lackington, Allen & Co., 1815, Volume 2, p. 198,
      For as I would my gorget have undon
      To event the heat that had mee nigh undone,
      An headles arrow strake mee through the throte,
      Where through my soule forsooke his fylthy cote.
    • 1598, George Chapman, The Third Sestiad, Hero and Leander (completion of the poem begun by Christopher Marlowe),
      […] as Phœbus throws
      His beams abroad, though he in clouds be clos’d,
      Still glancing by them till he find oppos’d
      A loose and rorid vapour that is fit
      T’ event his searching beams, and useth it
      To form a tender twenty-colour’d eye,
      Cast in a circle round about the sky […]
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