An unexpected event that causes damage can be referred to as an accident.
The word accident has its origin in the Latin term accidens . The concept refers to something that happens or arises unexpectedly , since it is not part of the natural or essential nature of the thing in question.
The most frequent use of the term is linked to the event that happens without intention and that causes damage to a living being or thing. For example: "Two people died in a traffic accident on Route 8," "The young woman remains hospitalized after accidentally falling from the balcony," "I cut myself by accident while preparing food."
Accidents can happen for different reasons and have very different consequences. While a plane crash can cause the death of hundreds of people, a plastic cup that falls by accident will not cause major inconvenience.
Classification of accidents
Accidents can be classified in different ways depending on where they occur. In this way we can talk about home accidents (such as an oil burn in the kitchen), traffic accidents (two cars collide in the street) or work accidents (a construction worker who trips and falls on his back). a scaffold).
This last meaning gives rise to a lot of controversy in the business world, since black contracting means the absence of occupational risk insurance . Thanks to misinformation, the best friend of exploiters, millions of employees do not know that a work accident is considered one that occurs both while they are at work and during the trip to the office and back home.
Differences from incidents
It is common in some regions to confuse the term with incident , but there are clear differences between the two. We can think of an incident as a fact that "cuts" reality and alters the course of things.
An unexpected event, yes, but that does not represent a misfortune or the destruction of something, but rather possibly leads to a change of decisions .
An irregularity in the terrain is called a geographical accident.
Geographical, grammatical and musical accidents
A geographical feature , on the other hand, is an elevation, a depression or another type of irregularity that can be noticed in a terrain. Some examples are cliffs, gulfs, mountains, valleys and blue holes.
Accidents also appear in grammar and music . In the first case, they indicate modifications of words according to time, gender or number, allowing coherence to exist in the sentences. The Spanish words that are affected by these changes are adjectives, nouns, verbs, pronouns and articles. These alterations can affect its structure, its mode or even its meaning .
In music, on the other hand, accidents enrich a melody since they allow different tonalities to be combined through momentary alterations. To give a didactic example, if we are composing a piece in C major for piano, in principle we can only play the white keys, which correspond to the sounds allowed within the mentioned scale . However, one of the keys related to C is G major, which contains one of the black keys (the F sharp). So, if we wanted part of the work to spend an instant in G major, every time we wrote an F in that section, we would have to clarify that it is sharp. This, in the view of a musician, is an accident.
Unwanted children
In our language , the noun in question also has a very derogatory and dangerous use for a person's psychology: children who are conceived by accident . Given the high rate of unexpected pregnancies, especially in teenagers, millions of people carry this terrible label of unwanted child on their faces.
But all the nuances that this word gives to sentences are not necessarily negative or tragic. It is said, for example, that someone heard something by accident , meaning that they did it involuntarily. While the information you accessed may be about something terrible for that person, it could also be about plans for a surprise party or a marriage proposal. It will be up to each individual to judge these last two pieces of news and decide whether or not they have a happy or disastrous character.