unhappening

English

Verb

unhappening

1. present participle of unhappen

Noun

unhappening (plural unhappenings)

1. (rare) A happening that fails to occur; a nonevent.
   • 1990, Stephanie Mills, Tom Brokaw, Jeanne Carstensen, In praise of nature (page 87)

     The stage was set for the Greening of America, but by lunchtime of the first day, the meeting had dissolved into an unhappening, as shouting matches broke out among deep ecologists, feminists, animal liberationists, anarchists...

   • 1997, Edward Palmer Thompson, Beyond the frontier: the politics of a failed mission, Bulgaria 1944 (page 43)

     British aid to Bulgarian partisans was defined, by silence, as a non-event, an unhappening. No official statement acknowledging this aid has ever been made.