Word: case Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From Middle English cas, from Old French cas (“an event”), from Latin cāsus (“a falling, a fall; accident, event, occurrence; occasion, opportunity; noun case”), perfect passive participle of cadō (“to fall, to drop”). Pronunciation: /keɪs/ 1. An actual event, situation, or fact. Example: For a change, in this case, he was telling the truth. Example: It is not the case that every unfamiliar phrase is an idiom. 2. A given condition or state. Labels: archaic Example: Thus vvhilſt he hopt he hild her leaſt, ſo altereth the cace / VVith ſuch as ſhe, Ah ſuch it is to build on ſuch a face. Example: Ne wist he how to turne, nor to what place: / Was never wretched man in such a wofull cace. 3. A specific matter or piece of work, specifically defined within a profession, usually in respect of a specific person and/or event; the set of tasks involved in addressing one such matter. Example: It was one of the detective's easiest cases. Example: Social workers should work on a maximum of forty active cases. 4. An instance or event as a topic of study. Example: The teaching consists of theory lessons and case studies. Example: He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record. 5. A legal proceeding; a lawsuit or prosecution. Example: “Two or three months more went by ; the public were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and sensations, surpassing those of the Tichbourne case, were looked forward to with palpitating interest. […]” Example: As the conflict has dragged on, prosecutors in Ukraine are now pursuing 247 cases of environmental war crimes against Russia in Ukrainian courts and the International Criminal Court, according to reporting published in April by the New York Times. 6. A specific inflection of a word (particularly a noun, pronoun, or adjective) depending on its function in the sentence. Example: The accusative case most commonly indicates a direct object. Example: Latin has six cases, and remnants of a seventh. 7. Grammatical cases and their meanings taken either as a topic in general or within a specific language. Labels: uncountable Example: Jane has been studying case in Caucasian languages. Example: Latin is a language that employs case. 8. An instance of a specific condition or set of symptoms. Example: There were another five cases reported overnight. Example: We turn next to the puzzle of borderlineness: If Harry is intermediate between clear cases and clear noncases of baldness, “Is Harry bald?” seems to have no good, direct, answer. 9. A section of code representing one of the actions of a conditional switch. Example: Place a break statement at the end of every case to prevent case fall-through. Example: Execution does not automatically stop at the next case. 10. A love affair. Labels: archaic Example: Poor fellow, just as I thought! It's a case with him, anybody can see that. He is thinking about Christine, for a certainty. Lovers always take to stargazing and moonlight dreaming — it's part of their complaint. Example: I thought it only an amourette when you told me. It was a fire — a conflagration; subdue it. I saw it was a case, and I advised you to try — dissipation.