from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- intransitive v. To come to pass.
- intransitive v. To come into being.
- intransitive v. To take place or occur by chance.
- intransitive v. To come upon something by chance.
- intransitive v. To come or go casually; make an appearance.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. To occur or take place.
- v. To occur unexpectedly, by chance or with a low probability.
- v. To encounter by chance.
- adv. maybe, perhaps.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- intransitive v. To come by chance; to come without previous expectation; to fall out.
- intransitive v. To take place; to occur.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To occur by chance; occur unexpectedly or unaccountably; in general, to occur; take place.
- To chance; be by chance or unexpectedly: as, he happened to be at home.
- Possibly; perhaps.
- Fortunate; happy; blessed.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- v. come to pass
- v. chance to be or do something, without intention or causation
- v. come into being; become reality
- v. happen, occur, or be the case in the course of events or by chance
- v. come upon, as if by accident; meet with
We Americans show very little care about atrocities that happen *as they happen*, and even less once they are past.
Sub-junctive_; which may or may not happen, hence introduced by an _if_, equal to _gif_, _give_, _grant_, _provided it so happen_.
What needs to happen is to have consumers write and visit their lawmakers regularly.
The only thing we will be sure to happen is to have a new president of the electoral commission, he said.
What needs to happen is tort reform and portability.
The very last thing I want to happen is to not meet their expectations.
Oh, right – tell me that this country wants to revert back to the days of GWB – and the destruction of the constitution = what really needs to happen is to elminate republicans from any elective office – even congressmen/women who possibly aare really republicans in disguise.
I cannot think of a more dangerous situation to be allowed to happen is to allow shooting at night!
What maybe needs to happen is to say that our next war is on our sad infrastructure.
Now, what does need to happen is to make sure such purchases are not subsidized on the back end.