Definition of "event" in English

noun

1. An occurrence; something that happens.

   • In the event of strong wind…

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.
   • In the event, he turned out to have what I needed anyway.

5. (figurative, uncommon, dated) A remarkable person.

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 […]

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.

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.