Word.ws English Dictionary

case

/keɪs/

case noun: an actual event, situation, or fact.

Noun (1)

case (plural cases)

  1. An actual event, situation, or fact.
    • For a change, in this case, he was telling the truth.
    • It is not the case that every unfamiliar phrase is an idiom.
  2. (archaic) A given condition or state.
    • Thus vvhilſt he hopt he hild her leaſt, ſo altereth the cace / VVith ſuch as ſhe, Ah ſuch it is to build on ſuch a face.1586, William Warner, “The Fourth Booke. Chapter XXXVI.”, in Albions England. Or Historicall Map of the Same Island: […], London: […] George Robinson [and R. Ward] for Thomas Cadman, […], →OCLC, page...
    • Ne wist he how to turne, nor to what place: / Was never wretched man in such a wofull cace.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  3. A specific matter or piece of work, specifically defined within a profession, usually in respect of a specific person and/or event; the set of tasks involved in addressing one such matter.
    • It was one of the detective's easiest cases.
    • Social workers should work on a maximum of forty active cases.
  4. An instance or event as a topic of study.
    • The teaching consists of theory lessons and case studies.
    • He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record.2012 March-April, John T. Jost, “Social Justice: Is It in Our Nature (and Our Future)?”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 162
  5. A legal proceeding; a lawsuit or prosecution.
    • “Two or three months more went by ; the public were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and sensations, surpassing those of the Tichbourne case, were looked forward to with palpitating interest. […]”1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Tremarn Case”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening &...
    • As the conflict has dragged on, prosecutors in Ukraine are now pursuing 247 cases of environmental war crimes against Russia in Ukrainian courts and the International Criminal Court, according to reporting published in April by the New York Times.2025 November 20, Simmone Shah, “Ukraine to Claim $44bn in Climate Damages From Russia. Why War Is So Bad For Emissions”, in TIME, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2025
  6. A specific inflection of a word (particularly a noun, pronoun, or adjective) depending on its function in the sentence.
    • The accusative case most commonly indicates a direct object.
    • Latin has six cases, and remnants of a seventh.
  7. (uncountable) Grammatical cases and their meanings taken either as a topic in general or within a specific language.
    • Jane has been studying case in Caucasian languages.
    • Latin is a language that employs case.
  8. An instance of a specific condition or set of symptoms.
    • There were another five cases reported overnight.
    • We turn next to the puzzle of borderlineness: If Harry is intermediate between clear cases and clear noncases of baldness, “Is Harry bald?” seems to have no good, direct, answer.2013, Gillian Russell, Delia Graff Fara, Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, page 144
    Antonyms:
    noncase
  9. A section of code representing one of the actions of a conditional switch.
    • Place a break statement at the end of every case to prevent case fall-through.2004, Rick Miller, C++ for Artists
    • Execution does not automatically stop at the next case.2011, Stephen Prata, C++ Primer Plus, page 275
  10. (archaic) A love affair.
    • Poor fellow, just as I thought! It's a case with him, anybody can see that. He is thinking about Christine, for a certainty. Lovers always take to stargazing and moonlight dreaming — it's part of their complaint.1867, The Young Ladies' Journal, page 467
    • I thought it only an amourette when you told me. It was a fire — a conflagration; subdue it. I saw it was a case, and I advised you to try — dissipation.1876, The New York Drama, volumes 1-2, page 1

Verb (1)

case (third-person singular simple present cases, present participle casing, simple past and past participle cased)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To propose hypothetical cases.
    • Casing upon the Matter.1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC

Noun (2)

case (plural cases)

  1. A box that contains or can contain a number of identical items of manufacture or commerce.
    • When the ship reached Melbourne two days later we collared a couple of cases of apples from the hold and hid them in our bunks.1933, Frank Clune, Try Anything Once, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 94
  2. A box, sheath, or covering generally.
    • a case for spectacles; the case of a watch
  3. A piece of luggage that can be used to transport an apparatus such as a sewing machine.
  4. An enclosing frame or casing.
    • a door case; a window case
  5. A suitcase.
  6. A piece of furniture, constructed partially of transparent glass or plastic, within which items can be displayed.
  7. The outer covering or framework of a piece of apparatus such as a computer.
  8. (historical) A shallow tray divided into compartments or “boxes” for holding type, traditionally arranged in sets of two, the “upper case” (containing capitals, small capitals, accented) and "lower case" (small letters, figures, punctuation marks, quadrats, and spaces).
  9. (broadly) The nature of a piece of alphabetic type, whether a “capital” (upper case) or “small” (lower case) letter.
  10. (slang) Four of a kind.
  11. (US) A unit of liquid measure used to measure sales in the beverage industry, equivalent to 192 fluid ounces.
  12. A small fissure which admits water into the workings.
Show 3 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A thin layer of harder metal on the surface of an object whose deeper metal is allowed to remain soft.
  2. A cardboard box that holds (usually 24) beer bottles or cans.
    • a single case of Bud Light
    Synonyms:
    carton
  3. (UK, obsolete, slang) A counterfeit crown (five-shilling coin).
    • The price of a case (five shillings piece bad) from the smasher is about one shilling; an alderman (two and sixpence) about sixpence; a peg (shilling) about threepence; a downer or sprat (sixpence) about twopence.1859, Snowden's magistrates assistant, page 90

Adjective

case (not comparable)

  1. (slang) The last remaining card of a particular rank.
    • He drew the case eight!
    • If he did have a bigger ace, I still had at least six outs — the case ace, two nines, and three tens. I could also have more outs if he held anything less than A-K.2006, David Apostolico, Lessons from the Professional Poker Tour, page 21

Verb (2)

case (third-person singular simple present cases, present participle casing, simple past and past participle cased)

  1. (transitive) To place (an item or items of manufacture) into a box, as in preparation for shipment.
  2. (transitive) To cover or protect with, or as if with, a case; to enclose.
    • The man who, cased in steel, had passed whole days and nights in the saddle.1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC
  3. (informal, transitive) To survey (a building or other location) surreptitiously, as in preparation for a robbery.
    • You are in the grounds of Brockholes Abbey, a house into which a great deal of valuable property has just been moved. And your job is to case the joint for a break in.1977, Michael Innes, The Gay Phoenix, →ISBN, page 116
    • Bonnie worked as a daycare director. She helped case the FBI office by posing as a college student interested in becoming an FBI agent.2014, Amy Goodman, From COINTELPRO to Snowden, the FBI Burglars Speak Out After 43 Years of Silence (Part 2), Democracy Now!, January 8, 2014, 0:49 to 0:57

Noun (3) capitalized: Case

Case

  1. abstract feature of a noun phrase that determines its function in a sentence, such as a grammatical case and a position.
    • The basic principle governing case is:
    • (20) The Case filter:
    • A lexicalized NP must bear a Case feature in S-structure.
    • ‘Case’ with a capital C is here understood not as morphologically marked case, but as an abstract feature which will be present even in languages such as Swahili or Chinese which lack case marking on NPs (it is usually assumed however, that Case will be congruent with morphological case where the...1988, Frederick J. Newmeyer, Linguistic Theory: Foundations

Proper noun capitalized: Case

Case

  1. A surname.
  2. A township in Presque Isle County, Michigan, United States.
  3. An unincorporated community in Laclede County, Missouri, United States.
  4. An unincorporated community in Warren County, Missouri.

Noun (4) capitalized: CASE

CASE

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, uncountable) Acronym of computer-aided software engineering.
  2. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of coatings, adhesives, sealants and elastomers.

case meaning in Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Nepali

case in Marathi

प्रकरण, केस, प्रकरणाला

case in Bengali

actual event, situation, or fact
ক্রিয়া kriẏa, ক্ষেত্র khetro, ক্রিয়াক্ষেত্র kriẏakkhetro

case in Telugu

law: lawsuit
కేసు kēsu, దావా dāvā

case in Nepali

केस, मामला
More languagesFewer languages
case in Tagalog
kaso
case in Arabic
قَضِيَّة qaḍiyya, عُلْبَة ʕulba, حَالَات ḥālāt, دَعْوَى daʕwā
case in Malay
kes
case in Persian
مورد mowred, کیس keys
case in Vietnamese
trường hợp, vụ kiện, ca, rương

Examples of case in a sentence

  • In case of fire, break glass. [sign on fire extinguisher holder in public space]
  • Conditioning would require exposition to any sentence before being uttered, which isn’t the case.
  • The doctor told us of an interesting case he had treated that morning.
  • University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
  • Mares which are over-fat, hold with much difficulty; whereas those that are but in good case and plump, conceive with the greatest readiness and ease.1726, Nathan Bailey, John Worlidge, Dictionarium Rusticum, Urbanicum & Botanicum:
  • We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect of so large a case.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...

All 40 example sentences with case

Synonyms of case

Antonyms

Forms of case

Noun
pluralcases
Verb
third-person singular presentcases
present participlecasing
past participlecased
pastcased

Past tense of case: cased

Plural of case: cases

Origin of case

From Middle English cas, from Old French cas (“an event”), from Latin cāsus (“a falling, a fall; accident, event, occurrence; occasion, opportunity; noun case”), perfect passive participle of cadō (“to fall, to drop”).

From Middle English case, from Old Northern French casse (compare Old French chasse (“box, chest, case”)), from Latin capsa (“box, bookcase”), from capiō (“to take, seize, hold”). Doublet of cash, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja, Asturian caxa, Portuguese caixa.

Capitalization by Noam Chomsky.

Words formed from case

Phrases with case

158 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with case

45 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about case

What does case mean?
Case means an actual event, situation, or fact.
What is case in Marathi?
Case in Marathi is प्रकरण, केस, प्रकरणाला. See Case meaning in Marathi.
How do you use case in a sentence?
In case of fire, break glass. [sign on fire extinguisher holder in public space]
What part of speech is case?
Case can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce case?
Case is pronounced /keɪs/.
What is the plural of case?
The plural of case is cases.

Words near case in the dictionary

  1. Cascones
  2. cascos
  3. cascrom
  4. cascroms
  5. CASCs
  6. case
  7. case and point
  8. case badge
  9. case badges
  10. case book
  11. case books

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: case (page history and authors); Case (page history and authors); CASE (page history and authors); case (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); case (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-case.wav, en-us-case.ogg.

Cite this entry: “case.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/case. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.