Thesaurus results for HAPPENSTANCE

happenstance

noun

as in coincidence

formal + literary something that happens by chance Our meeting was pure happenstance. We met each other by happenstance.

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Example Sentences

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Recent Examples of happenstance Other members came by word of mouth, and occasionally by happenstance. —

Paige Williams, New Yorker, 12 Jan. 2026 By happenstance, the high risk report was released just as a scandal was erupting in Minnesota over widespread fraud in a program meant to keep children fed during the pandemic. —

Dan Walters, Mercury News, 9 Jan. 2026 By happenstance, the high risk report was released just as a scandal was erupting in Minnesota over widespread fraud in a program meant to keep children fed during the pandemic. —

Dan Walters, Oc Register, 8 Jan. 2026 By pure happenstance, McDermott bumped into Kelly on Friday night at Anthony-Brown Pharmacy in Orchard Park. —

Tim Graham, New York Times, 5 Jan. 2026 See All Example Sentences for happenstance

Recent Examples of Synonyms for happenstance

Noun

The movie’s vision is one of arrangements and connections, stylistic and textural clashes of hulking buildings, stark forms seen in distant vistas, sublime coincidences of collective energy thrumming from generation to generation in the simultaneity of the physical city’s chronological strata.

— Richard Brody, New Yorker, 4 Feb. 2026
Seems somewhat of a coincidence.

— Melanie Anzidei, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2026