All 5 Uses of
contingency
in
The House of Mirth
- The "points" she had had the presence of mind to glean from Selden, in anticipation of this very contingency, were serving her to such good purpose that she began to think her visit to him had been the luckiest incident of the day.†
Chpt 1.2
- To guard against such contingencies she frequented the more populous watering-places, where she installed herself impersonally in a hired house and looked on at life through the matting screen of her verandah.†
Chpt 1.3
- Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies, hampered her in the decisive moments of life.†
Chpt 1.5 *
- Chance, or perhaps his own resolve, had kept them apart since his hasty withdrawal from Bellomont; but Miss Bart was an expert in making the most of the unexpected, and the distasteful incidents of the last few minutes—the revelation to Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most wished him to ignore—increased her longing for shelter, for escape from such humiliating contingencies.†
Chpt 1.8
- The latter contingency seemed improbable, yet Lily was not without a sense of uneasiness.†
Chpt 1.12
Definition:
-
(contingency) something that might happen -- especially something that it is hoped will not happen
or more rarely:
something available in case of an event -- especially an event that it is hoped will not occur