accident of birth
accident of birth noun: a fact, situation, or personal characteristic, which may be desirable or undesirable, resulting from the circumstances into which a person was born, and which is therefore entirely beyond their control.
Noun
accident of birth (plural accidents of birth)
- A fact, situation, or personal characteristic, which may be desirable or undesirable, resulting from the circumstances into which a person was born, and which is therefore entirely beyond their control.
- [H]e said to himself that he was a very good-looking man, and could have adorned a much higher sphere in life than that in which the accident of birth had placed him.1899, Charles W. Chesnutt, “Uncle Wellington's Wives”, in The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories
- "You're no brother of mine," she broke in. "At most it is an accident of birth I disown. I'll have no relationship with you of any sort."1910, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 4, in A Texas Ranger
Forms of accident of birth
| plural | accidents of birth |
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Questions about accident of birth
- What does accident of birth mean?
- Accident of birth means a fact, situation, or personal characteristic, which may be desirable or undesirable, resulting from the circumstances into which a person was born, and which is therefore entirely beyond their control.
- What part of speech is accident of birth?
- Accident of birth is a noun.
- What is the plural of accident of birth?
- The plural of accident of birth is accidents of birth.
Words near accident of birth in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: accident of birth (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-accident of birth.ogg.
Cite this entry: “accident of birth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/accident_of_birth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.