occasion

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A favorable opportunity; a convenient or timely chance.

   “At this point, she seized the occasion to make her own observation.”

   “Foꝛ ſynne toke occaſiõ by the meanes of the cõmaundement and ſo diſceaved me / and by the ſilfe cõmaundemẽt ſlewe me.”

   “I'll take the occasion which he gives to bring / Him to his death.”

   “That our Work, therefore, might be in no Danger of being likened to the Labours of theſe Hiſtorians, we have taken every Occaſion of interſpersing through the whole ſundry Similes, Deſcriptions, and other kind of poetical Embelliſhments.”

2. (countable, uncountable)The time when something happens.

   “On this occasion, I'm going to decline your offer, but next time I might agree.”

   “And Vickers launched forth in a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with supreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes. He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.”

3. (countable, uncountable)An occurrence or state of affairs which causes some event or reaction; a motive or reason.

   “I had no occasion to feel offended, however.”

4. (countable, uncountable)Something which causes something else; a cause.

   “[I]t were too vile to ſay, and ſcarce to be beleeued, what we endured: but the occaſion was our owne, for want of prouidence, induſtrie and gouernment, […]”

5. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)An occurrence or incident.
6. (countable, uncountable)A particular happening; an instance or time when something occurred.

   “I could think of two separate occasions when she had deliberately lied to me.”

   “a momentous occasion in the history of South Africa”

   “I only think of you on two occasions / That's day and night / I'd go for broke if I could be with you / Only you can make it right”

   “In the last two decades, North Korea has on various occasions conducted highly provocative missile and nuclear tests and promised to turn Seoul into a sea of fire.”

7. (countable, uncountable)A need; requirement, necessity.

   “I have no occasion for firearms.”

   “[…] after we have ſerved our ſelves, and our own occaſions.”

   “When my occaſions took me into France, […]”

   “I had occasion,[…], to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return,[…], I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting,[…], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.”

8. (countable, uncountable)A special event or function.

   “Having people round for dinner was always quite an occasion at our house.”

9. (countable, uncountable)A reason or excuse; a motive; a persuasion.

   “VVhoſe manner was all paſſengers to ſtay, / And entertaine with her occaſions ſly, […]”

verb

1. (transitive)To cause; to produce; to induce

   “It is seen that the mental changes are occasioned by a change of polarity.”

   “To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world.”

   “[…] although overcrowding on the trains running via London Bridge has occasioned considerable discomfort to regular travellers, it was noticed that the alternative route was not extensively patronised, and that the trains were seldom more than half-filled.”

   “The new tunnel has been associated with, but not actually occasioned by, the electrification of the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath lines of the former L.N.E.R., initiated before the war.”

   “In the early days of the Large Hadron Collider, when the megamachine kept running into seemingly endless, and increasingly improbable, financial and technical snags, some researchers—calling these mishaps “anti-miracles”—even half-seriously proposed that the universe was censoring us from this sort of destruction of the world occasioned by a successful run of the collider.”