contingent

Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French contingent, from Medieval Latin contingens (“possible, contingent”), present participle of contingere (“to touch, meet, attain to, happen”), from com- (“together”) + tangere (“to touch”).

noun

1. An event which may or may not happen; that which is unforeseen, undetermined, or dependent on something future.
2. That which falls to one in a division or apportionment among a number; a suitable share.
3. (military) A quota of troops.
   Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured Mosul in June, but the groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to Jordan’s anti-terrorism law. It is estimated that 2,000 Jordanians have fought and 250 of them have died in Syria – making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and Tunisians. 27 November 2014, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian

adj

1. Possible or liable, but not certain to occur.
2. (with upon or on) Dependent on something that is undetermined or unknown, that may or may not occur.
   The success of his undertaking is contingent upon events which he cannot control.
   a contingent estate
   The imposition of the death penalty should not be contingent on a particular jury's unguided understanding of a legal term of art. 1989, Thurgood Marshall, “Dissenting Opinion”, in Watkins v. Murray
   This rather narrow theological dispute eventually helped eradicate from Western philosophy the idea of universals—the notion that concepts in the mind correspond to eternal truths, like the Platonic forms—and succeeded in making the world, as Blumenberg puts it, “radically contingent.” 2021, Meghan O'Gieblyn, quoting Hans Blumenberg, chapter 11, in God, Human, Animal, Machine[…]
3. Not logically necessarily true or false.
4. Temporary.
   contingent labor
   contingent worker