coincidence
/kəʊˈɪnsɪd(ə)ns
/noun
1A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection: it was a coincidence that she was wearing a jersey like Laura’s [mass noun]: they met by coincidence...
- By coincidence I was trailing two unsuspecting girls also apparently going to the show.
- By coincidence, the factory closed down in 1912, the year the Titanic went down at sea with such a huge loss of life.
- By coincidence, my friend Nat Gertler was at the same performance last night of The Producers.
Synonyms
accident, chance, serendipity, fate, a twist of fate, destiny, fortuity, fortune, providence, freak, hazard;
a piece of good fortune, (a bit of) luck, (a bit of) good luck, a fluke, a happy chance;
North American happenstance
2 [mass noun] The fact of corresponding in nature or in time of occurrence: the coincidence of interest between the mining companies and certain politicians...
- For most of the time, this coincidence of interest was recognized.
- There is little coincidence of interest between the consumer and a state-owned utility.
- This surprising degree of coincidence of territory and national identity has been achieved in two ways.
Synonyms
co-occurrence, coexistence, conjunction, simultaneity, simultaneousness, contemporaneity, contemporaneousness, concomitance, synchronicity, synchrony;
clash, conflict
correspondence, agreement, accord, concurrence, match, fit, consistency, conformity, harmony, compatibility, dovetailing, correlation, parallelism;
similarity, likeness
3 Physics The presence of ionizing particles or other objects in two or more detectors simultaneously, or of two or more signals simultaneously in a circuit.In their estimation, nothing could explain the coincidences except the momentary passing of a gravitational wave....
- When the beams were in phase, they detected five times as many coincidences as when they were out of phase.
- One of the most famous anthropic coincidences was discovered by the English physicist Sir Fred Hoyle in 1954.
Origin
Early 17th century (in the sense 'occupation of the same space'): from medieval Latin coincidentia, from coincidere 'coincide, agree' (see coincide).