act of God

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See also: Act of God

English

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Alternative forms

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Noun

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act of God (plural acts of God)

  1. (law) An unforeseen occurrence beyond one's control, such as a natural disaster.
    Synonyms: force majeure, vis major
    Coordinate terms: accident, bolt from the blue
    • 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 [], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168:
      They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God.
    • 1997 January 5, Jack Miles, “On a Mission From God”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
      The action of “The Discovery of Heaven” combines the emotional melodrama of a telenovela with a sequence of events that an insurance lawyer would call acts of God.
    • 2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 42:
      Infrastructure failures tend to be treated like acts of God, but of course they aren't really.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see act,‎ of,‎ God.

Translations

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