Contingent

Contingent Definition

Contingent means liable but not certain to happen. While the word can stress sheer unpredictability — as in “the contingencies of war” — in social science it more often marks a genuinely causal relationship, as opposed to a connection that holds merely by definition.

Contingent versus Definitional Truths

The next triangle I encounter is certain to have three sides, but that certainty comes from the definition of a triangle, not from any regularity in the world. Whether I enjoy the next film I see, by contrast, is a contingency: it depends on how the world actually turns out. The word is also used as a synonym for “caused by” or “dependent on,” as in “my pleasure in watching this film is contingent on there being no smoking in the cinema.”