conjuncture

plural conjunctures

1. A combination of events or circumstances; a conjunction; a union.

   To be sitting, at so pleasant a conjuncture of one's courses, in oneself, by oneself, that I think it will freely be admitted is a way no worse than another, and better than some, of whiling away an instant of leisure.

   1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC

2. A set of circumstances causing a crisis; a juncture.

   [I]n his later years, he [James II of England] repeatedly, at conjunctures such as have often inspired timorous and delicate women with heroic courage, showed a pusillanimous anxiety about his personal safety.

   1851, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XVI, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, pages 635–636