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What is the difference between accident and incident?

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jennifer_h2 profile picture jennifer_h2January 2022
Hello!

The word “accident” is a noun and is most commonly described as something that occurred/happened that was not meant to happen.
For example, I dropped my glass of water—it was an accident. (I didn’t mean to drop it).
It is commonly used as a way to describe something negative, like a car accident, or an accident in the workplace if someone gets injured or something happens like a shelf topples over. However, it does not always have to be a negative scenario. You could say “we fell in love by accident”, meaning we didn’t intend to fall I love but it just happened!

The word “incident” refers to a situation where something significant happens. Again, it’s USUALLY negative, but not always. Like if you were to read in the newspaper about a shooting or something serious that occurred, it would be referred to as an “incident”. Or say you were describing a general altercation between two people to the police over the phone but you weren’t really sure what was happening, you could tell them “there was an incident between these two men at the park a few moments ago and everyone seems very upset”.

I guess the main difference is, an accident is something that happens that was not intended or planned for, and an incident is just a term to describe a situation where something notable happened. So you technically could say “there was a car accident on this road earlier. The incident took place at 9 o’clock this morning.”

I hope that helps!