act of God
22
6.8
- noun
- /ækt əv ɡɑd/
- Specialized
- Moreover, weather and disasters are generally understood as natural phenomena not controlled by humans but instead as "acts of God."
Examples
-
It's an act of God.
-
There are things you can't fight, acts of God.
-
This is an act of God.
-
This was an act of God.
-
If something goes wrong, we blame an act of nature or an act of God.
Blog text (34) -
Only an act of God can save us from what is on the horizon.
Blog text (12) -
It was an act of God.
-
The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.
Blog text (14) -
It made sense for a lot of people to interpret natural phenomena as acts of God.
-
Many homeowners seek insurance coverage for damages resulting from an act of God like a hurricane.
Synonyms
5
9.8
A large unexpected event like a natural disaster or war that prevents someone from fulfilling a contract
1
6.0
An unexpected event you cannot stop even with great care
A strong natural event like an earthquake or flood that you cannot stop and that stops normal life
Antonyms
How Preventable
Surface Forms
Morphology
A learner who knows 'act' (an action) and 'God' will likely infer this refers to an action attributed to a divine force and thus something beyond human control, so there is a visible compositional link. However, the specific legal/insurance sense — that it labels natural events (floods, earthquakes) as unforeseeable and exculpatory — is a conventionalized, register-specific meaning not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Act of God comes from old religious ideas: people long ago called terrible natural events like floods or earthquakes 'acts of God' because they seemed caused by a higher power, not by people. That's why today, in contracts and insurance, an act of God means a natural event that is 'outside human control'.