Contingentia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The concept refers to the quality of events or facts that are possible but not necessary ; a philosophical principle dealing with occurrences that depend on certain conditions ; in logic, the state of being neither certain nor impossible
2. Signifying the property by which something may or may not happen without inner necessity ; a doctrine concerned with occurrences reliant on external circumstances ; in reasoning, a status of propositions that are not universally or necessarily true
3. Describing the state of affairs whose existence or truth is subject to chance or conditional circumstances ; a metaphysical theory relating to things that could be otherwise ; in logic, pertaining to statements that are valid only under particular situations

Etymology: Before it named a philosophical idea, the Latin verb "contingere" meant "to touch" or "to befall." Its present participle, "contingens," described something that happened to touch on a situation, so an event could be thought of as reaching you by chance. Medieval Latin scholars built the noun "contingentia" from this stem, and it took on the sense of events that could have gone otherwise. Scholastic philosophers used it to separate what must be from what merely happens to be. In their logic, a thing that is neither necessary nor impossible sat in between, and this middle category is the meaning the term carries here. English took the idea through its adjective "contingent," and the noun "contingency" followed. The exact date of the Medieval Latin usage and of English adoption are uncertain to me, so I have left them out.

Synonyms: contingency, possibility, eventuality

Antonyms: certainty, necessity