By chance, by coincidence, by accident …

I hope you are surviving the heat! I am so happy to be in the UK where I can enjoy the cooler temperatures by the sea (here’s a photo of Bournemouth beach). Now this week, I thought I would try and explain the difference between ‘by chance’, ‘by coincidence’ and ‘by accident’ … hmmmm … where shall I start? In German, it’s easy – zufällig, zufällig and zufällig 😊 so no wonder it is difficult to understand the difference.

I looked it up and found in a blog reply, “By chance is having a possibility. By coincidence is something that happened unexpectedly but there was no connection before the incident. By accident is unexpectedly and unintentionally.” Does that help? Probably not …

It is probably best to give an example:

A few years ago, we were flying to England during the World Cup and by chance looked out of the window at the airport and saw that Lufthansa had renamed their planes Fanhansa (a random possibility).

When we got to the departure lounge, we saw our nextdoor neighbours who by coincidence were flying to England on the same plane (no connection before incident).

When we were returning to the airport, my late husband missed the motorway exit by accident(unintentional but could have something to do with a late night at the pub the night before 😊.)

Other examples of coincidences are when my hairdresser and I were both wearing a long black skirt at my appointment last week and we never wear black skirts … and when two students of mine came to work wearing nearly exactly the same outfit … you get the idea?

Hope that helps … and don’t complain … I have to cope with the same German word having two different meanings depending on which article you use (e.g. Stift and Leiter) when I have trouble with articles anyway … 

And for those of you interested in English literature, Thomas Hardy didn’t believe in chances and coincidences but in supernatural powers, but we won’t go down that road …