con·tin·gen·cy

[kuhn-tin-juhn-see]
noun, plural con·tin·gen·cies.
1.
dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a condition; uncertainty; fortuitousness: Nothing was left to contingency.
2.
a contingent event; a chance, accident, or possibility conditional on something uncertain: He was prepared for every contingency.
3.
something incidental to a thing.

Origin:
1555–65; conting(ent) + -ency


2. emergency, likelihood, predicament.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source Link To contingency
Collins
World English Dictionary
contingency (kənˈtɪndʒənsɪ) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
 
n , pl -cies
1.  a.  a possible but not very likely future event or condition; eventuality
 b.  (as modifier): a contingency plan
2.  something dependent on a possible future event
3.  a fact, event, etc, incidental to or dependent on something else
4.  in systemic grammar
 a.  Compare adding modification of the meaning of a main clause by use of a bound clause introduced by a binder such as if, when, though, or since
 b.  (as modifier): a contingency clause
5.  logic
 a.  the state of being contingent
 b.  a contingent statement
6.  dependence on chance; uncertainty
7.  statistics
 a.  the degree of association between theoretical and observed common frequencies of two graded or classified variables. It is measured by the chi-square test
 b.  (as modifier): a contingency table; the contingency coefficient

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source
00:10
Contingency is an LSAT word you need to know.
So is sufficient. Does it mean:
enough
Unlikely to be true or to happen.
Etymonline
Word Origin & History

contingency
1560s, "quality of being contingent," from contingent (q.v.). Meaning "a chance occurrence" is from 1610s.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source
Example sentences
Since they are working on a contingency basis, they stand to gain a substantial
  portion of any damages.
By doing so he deliberately plunges back into the contingency, risk, and moral
  uncertainty that he had temporarily escaped.
It has to spell out every possible contingency in advance, even unlikely ones.
Human beings don't want to accept radical contingency.
Copyright © 2013 Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
  • Please Login or Sign Up to use the Recent Searches feature
FAVORITES
RECENT