Phrase guide

actual occasions

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

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Pronunciation

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1

noun

Meaning 1

The final real things in the universe, that are "experiential" in nature rather than strictly material. The most basic thing or construct in the universe. Some Whitehead scholars would hold that trillions of Actual Occasions compose one quark. Actual occasions make up everything, even empty space

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: plural, plural-only

Examples

  • "Actual entities--also termed Actual Occasions--are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real. ...The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent." Whitehead, A.N., Process and Reality: an essay in Cosmology, ed. by Griffin, D. and Sherburne, D., New York: The Free Press, 1978.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Coined by Alfred North Whitehead.