event

Etymology 1

From Middle French event, from Latin ēventus (“an event, occurrence”), from ēveniō (“to happen, to fall out, to come out”), from ē (“out of, from”), short form of ex + veniō (“come”); related to venture, advent, convent, invent, convene, evene, etc.

noun

1. An occurrence; something that happens.
   Experience in Australia indicates that after a devastating weather event, up to one-fifth of people suffer the debilitating effects of extreme stress, emotional injury, and despair. 2017, Anthony J. McMichael, Alistair Woodward, Cameron Muir, Climate Change and the Health of Nations, page 67
2. A prearranged social activity (function, etc.)
   I went to an event in San Francisco last week.
   Where will the event be held?
3. One of several contests that combine to make up a competition.
4. An end result; an outcome (now chiefly in phrases).
   Of my ill boding Dream / Behold the dire Event. 1707, Semele, by Eccles and Congrieve; scene 8
   In the event, he turned out to have what I needed anyway.
5. (figurative, uncommon, dated) A remarkable person.
   Miss Burton, you are an event! Sleepy, old Lymston's going to love you! Bye-bye. Bye. 1985, Miss Marple: The Moving Finger, spoken by Mr. Pye
6. (physics) A point in spacetime having three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate.
7. (computing) A possible action that the user can perform that is monitored by an application or the operating system (event listener). When an event occurs an event handler is called which performs a specific task.
8. (probability theory) A set of some of the possible outcomes; a subset of the sample space.
   If X is a random variable representing the toss of a six-sided die, then its sample space could be denoted as {1,2,3,4,5,6}. Examples of events could be: X=1, X=2, X>5,X̸=4, and X isin 1,3,5.
9. (obsolete) An affair in hand; business; enterprise.
10. (medicine) An episode of severe health conditions.

verb

1. (obsolete) To occur, take place.
   1590, Robert Greene, Greene’s Never Too Late, in The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, Volume 8, Huff Library, 1881, p. 33, […] I will first rehearse you an English Historie acted and evented in my Countrey of England […]

Etymology 2

From French éventer.

verb

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be emitted or breathed out; to evaporate.
   c. 1597, Ben Jonson, The Case is Altered, Act V, Scene 8, in C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (editors), Ben Jonson, Volume 3, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, p. 178, ô that thou sawst my heart, or didst behold The place from whence that scalding sigh evented.
   This is the reason why this water hath no such force when it is carried, as it hath at the spring it self: because the vertue of it consisteth in a spiritual and occulte qualitie, which eventeth and vanisheth by the carriage. 1615, William Barclay, Callirhoe; commonly called The Well of Spa or The Nymph of Aberdene, Aberdeen, published 1799, page 12
2. (obsolete, transitive) To expose to the air, ventilate.
   1559, attributed to William Baldwin, “How the Lorde Clyfford for his straunge and abhominable cruelty came to as straunge and sodayne a death” in The Mirror for Magistrates, Part III, edited by Joseph Haslewood, London: Lackington, Allen & Co., 1815, Volume 2, p. 198, For as I would my gorget have undon To event the heat that had mee nigh undone, An headles arrow strake mee through the throte, Where through my soule forsooke his fylthy cote.
   1598, George Chapman, The Third Sestiad, Hero and Leander (completion of the poem begun by Christopher Marlowe), […] as Phœbus throws His beams abroad, though he in clouds be clos’d, Still glancing by them till he find oppos’d A loose and rorid vapour that is fit T’ event his searching beams, and useth it To form a tender twenty-colour’d eye, Cast in a circle round about the sky […]