Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Circumstance   /sˈərkəmstˌæns/   Listen
noun
circumstance  n.  
1.
That which attends, or relates to, or in some way affects, a fact or event; an attendant thing or state of things. "The circumstances are well known in the country where they happened."
2.
An event; a fact; a particular incident. "The sculptor had in his thoughts the conqueror weeping for new worlds, or the like circumstances in history."
3.
Circumlocution; detail. (Obs.) "So without more circumstance at all I hold it fit that we shake hands and part."
4.
pl. Condition in regard to worldly estate; state of property; situation; surroundings. "When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations."
Not a circumstance, of no account. (Colloq.)
Under the circumstances, taking all things into consideration.
Synonyms: Event; occurrence; incident; situation; condition; position; fact; detail; item. See Event.



verb
Circumstance  v. t.  To place in a particular situation; to supply relative incidents. "The poet took the matters of fact as they came down to him and circumstanced them, after his own manner."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Circumstance" Quotes from Famous Books



... literature the principle of Burns that "a man's a man for a' that"; and though this fact has now become a truism, it was a discovery, and an important discovery, when Balzac wrote. He showed that, because we are ourselves ordinary men and women, it is really human interest, and not sensational circumstance which appeals to us, and that material for enthralling drama can be found in the life of the most commonplace person—of a middle-aged shopkeeper threatened with bankruptcy, or of an elderly musician with a weakness for good ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... circumstance will tempt you or not depends on what you are. If there is nothing adhesive on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... experience appear to have proved, that, with that organisation which constitutes the German, goes an unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... before the kirk-session on 30th December 1634, for causing a bairn of his to be taken to the mill of Balhousie and put into the flappers thereof, when the mill was going, to be charmed, which, it was alleged, was a lesson of Satan. He answered that he knew not of the circumstance until the child was brought home." [The offence being considered an odious one, the session resolved to take the advice of the presbytery how to proceed, but we are not informed how the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... This circumstance, which is historical, as well as the description that precedes it, will remind the reader of the war of La Vendee, in which the royalists, consisting chiefly of insurgent peasantry, attached a prodigious and even superstitious interest to the possession of a piece of brass ordnance, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com