Definition of "accident"

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, / Of moving accidents by flood and field […]

c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]

Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident. Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene, another solvent, which has the well-known property of causing this type of cancer.

2013 July-August, Philip J. Bushnell, “Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance”, in American Scientist

He also objects to the idea of women arising by an accident of nature, preferring the notion that they came about as a 'result of some strong mental impression', and so 'the sex of the progeny would have been settled by the decision of the progenitor'.

2008, Celia Deane-Drummond, The Ethics of Nature, page 206

Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident, / It is the very place God meant for thee; […]

c.1861-1863, Richard Chevenix Trench, in 1888, Letters and memorials, Volume 1

And so with his writing, which he proudly said was a perfect counterpart of his life. Accident played a major part in both.

1991 Autumn, Robert M. Adams, “Montaigne”, in American Scholar, volume 60, number 4, page 589

This accident, as I call it, of Athens being situated some miles from the sea, which is rather the consequence of its being a very ancient site, […]

1883, J. P. Mahaffy, Social life in Greece from Homer to Menander

If they went through their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the change would be the same […] , its accidents would be different.

1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society, published 2008, page 171

These cookes how they stamp, and strain, and grind, / And turne substance into accident, / To fulfill all thy likerous talent!

14thC, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale in The Canterbury Tales

But as to Man, all the Fruits of the Earth, all sorts of Herbs, Plants and Roots, the Fishes of the Sea, and the Birds of the Air do not suffice him, but he must disguise, vary, and sophisticate, change the substance into accident, that by such irritations as these, Nature might be provoked, and as it were necessitated.

1677, chapter 3, in Heraclitus Christianus: or, the Man of Sorrow, page 14

Nonetheless, those who have no evidence of the impossibility of the transformation of accident into substance believe that it is death itself which will be actually transformed into a ram on the Day of Resurrection and then be slaughtered.

1989, Iysa A. Bello, The medieval Islamic controversy between philosophy and orthodoxy, page 55

It would also follow that God ought to be able to transmute genera, converting substance into accident, knowledge into ability, black into white, and sound into smell, just as he can turn the inanimate into animate […]

2005, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Medieval Islamic philosophical writings, page 175

nor can God effect the transmutation of substances (from accident into substance, or substance into accident, or substance without accident).

2010, T. M. Rudavsky, Maimonides, page 142

We weren’t there long when Karin asked about our dog. When we told her Chris was in the car, she insisted we bring him up to the apartment. I rejected her offer and said he might have an accident on the carpet and I didn’t want to worry about it.

2009, Marcia Stedron, My Roller Coaster Life as an Army Wife, Xlibris Corporation, page 56