Wednesday Words & Woes: Incidence and Incidents

These words are true homophones, words that sound the same (or nearly so) but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

Let's start with incidence.

From The American Heritage Dictionary:  The act of something occurring or the rate of occurrence of something, particularly something negative.

• a high incidence of (rate of) malaria in the tropics
  
• an increased incidence of (rate of) cancer in smokers

According to Merriam Webster: The number of times something happens or develops; the rate at which something occurs.

• an increased incidence of diabetes
  
• a high incidence of criminal behavior
  

Incidents is just the plural of incident, which is defined as shown below (definitions from The American Heritage Dictionary):

• A particular occurrence, especially one of minor importance. 
  
• An event in a narrative or drama.
  
• A usually violent or disruptive occurrence, especially one that precipitates a larger crisis:
  There was an international incident that provoked war.
  
• An occurrence that interrupts normal procedure or functioning; a mishap:
  The plane landed without incident.
  

The examples above could be rewritten using the plural incidents:

• Several international incidents provoked the war.
  
• There were several unfortunate incidents involving planes recently.
  

I hope that these brief explanations and examples help you distinguish these two words more easily. You can find even more information at www.yourdictionary.com, which is my go-to site as it includes definitions and examples from several dictionaries all in one place.

I hope you find this post to be relevant, and if so, I hope you'll share it with your connections, so they may learn as well. And please share your thoughts with us; I am always interested to see what my readers find valuable. 

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