act of God

plural acts of God · alternative Act of God

1. lawAn unforeseen occurrence beyond one's control, such as a natural disaster.

   Infrastructure failures tend to be treated like acts of God, but of course they aren't really.

   2019 October, Ian Walmsley, “Cleaning up”, in Modern Railways, page 42

   2 more examples

   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.

   1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168

   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.

   1997 January 5, Jack Miles, “On a Mission From God”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: force majeure, vis major

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see act, of, God.

plural Acts of God

1. usually "an"lawAlternative letter-case form of act of God.

   Heavy rainfall is not the kind of exceptional phenomenon to which the Act of God exception applies.

   2 more examples

   In road and rail traffic liability is excluded for accidents which are due to circumstances amounting to an Act of God.

   “Pardon me,” I said, preserving with an effort the polished suavity demanded from an English gentleman when chewing the rag with one of the other sex, “you're talking through the back of your fatheaded little neck. I did not trip over my flat feet. I was hurled into the depths by an Act of God, to wit, a totally unexpected dachshund getting between my legs.”

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC