coincidence
/kəʊˈɪnsɪdəns/
coincidence · noun — of objects, the property of being coincident; occurring at the same time or place. It carries an Arena rating of 1502, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, coincidence ranks #2,457 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words, #3,069 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #5,312 of 17,162 for Most Elegant Words, #5,610 of 17,163 for Most Beautiful Words.
coincidence is pronounced /kəʊˈɪnsɪdəns/.
Why “coincidence” is a great word
A notable concurrence of events or circumstances without an obvious causal connection. From Medieval Latin coincidentia, from coincidere, from Latin co- ("together") + incidere ("to fall upon, happen"), first attested in English c. 1600. Unlike "synchronicity," which suggests a hidden, meaningful pattern, or "serendipity," which frames a chance event as a happy discovery, coincidence is a neutral and often unsettling adjacency. It is the stranger on the train who shares your birthday, the same obscure book falling open in two cities on the same afternoon, the forgotten letter found on the day it is needed—brief collisions on a crowded street where no one stops to exchange a name, leaving only the faint, unsettling hum of a universe whose machinery we cannot see.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From Middle French coincidence (French coïncidence). By surface analysis, coincide + -ence.
noun
- Of objects, the property of being coincident; occurring at the same time or place.
- Of events, the appearance of a meaningful connection when there is none.e.g.“That the two writers were born and died on the same day is just a coincidence, although there are many conspiracy theories about it.”
- A coincidence point.
- A fixed point of a correspondence; a point of a variety corresponding to itself under a correspondence.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.