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English
Noun
act of God (plural acts of God)
- (law) An unforeseen occurrence beyond one's control, such as a natural disaster.
- Synonyms: force majeure, vis major
- Coordinate terms: accident, bolt from the blue
1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 , New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168:They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God.
1997 January 5, Jack Miles, “On a Mission From God”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:The action of “The Discovery of Heaven” combines the emotional melodrama of a telenovela with a sequence of events that an insurance lawyer would call acts of God.
2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 42:Infrastructure failures tend to be treated like acts of God, but of course they aren't really.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see act, of, God.
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