Phrase guide
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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noun
A bad event that should never occur.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: event, occurrence, happening
noun
A bad event that should never occur.
A serious adverse medical event that should never occur and thus is, by strict definitions of preventability, always preventable, being unambiguous, clearly identifiable and measurable, and resulting in death or significant disability.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: event, occurrence, happening
noun
A bad event that should never occur.
A serious adverse medical event that should never occur and thus is, by strict definitions of preventability, always preventable, being unambiguous, clearly identifiable and measurable, and resulting in death or significant disability.
A particularly shocking preventable medical error that should never occur.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: event, occurrence, happening, error, mistake
History
The strictest sense, referring to a particularly shocking medical error that should never happen, was the original sense of a never event (circa 2001), although a nuclear power industry publication from the 1980s mentioned a "once-in-a-never event", a collocation playing on such predecessors as once-in-a-blue-moon event and once-in-a-lifetime event.
