contingent

plural contingents

1. An event which may or may not happen; that which is unforeseen, undetermined, or dependent on something in the future.

   Synonyms: contingency, chance, contingency, eventuality, possibility, potentiality

2. That which falls to one in a division or apportionment among a number; a suitable share.

   Synonyms: proportion

3. governmentA quota of troops.

   1 more example

   Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured Mosul in June, but the groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to Jordan’s anti-terrorism law. It is estimated that 2,000 Jordanians have fought and 250 of them have died in Syria – making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and Tunisians.

   2014 November 27, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian

comparative more contingent · superlative most contingent

1. Possible or liable, but not certain, to occur.

   Synonyms: incidental, casual · Antonyms: certain, inevitable, necessary, impossible

2. Dependent on something that is undetermined or unknown, that may or may not occur.

   a contingent estate

   4 more examples

   The success of his undertaking is contingent upon events which he cannot control.

   The imposition of the death penalty should not be contingent on a particular jury's unguided understanding of a legal term of art.

   1989, Thurgood Marshall, “Dissenting Opinion”, in Watkins v. Murray

   This rather narrow theological dispute eventually helped eradicate from Western philosophy the idea of universals—the notion that concepts in the mind correspond to eternal truths, like the Platonic forms—and succeeded in making the world, as Blumenberg puts it, “radically contingent.”

   2021, Meghan O'Gieblyn, quoting Hans Blumenberg, chapter 11, in God, Human, Animal, Machine […] , →ISBN

   Both Catalan parties have said their support for getting the PSOE back into office will be contingent on an amnesty for the hundreds of people who participated in the failed push to secede from Spain in October 2017.

   2023 November 5, Sam Jones, “PSOE members back Catalan amnesty plan to secure power in Spain”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: conditional, conditional, conditioned, qualified

3. Not logically necessarily true or false.
4. Temporary.

   contingent labor

   1 more example

   contingent worker