The biggest difference is that accidents are never intentional, but incidents might be!
가장큰 차이는 accidents는 우연히 일어난 일에는 쓸 수 있지만, incident는 모든 상황에서 다 사용 가능하다.
incident
- 'An incident' is much more general
- 좀 더 일반적으로 사용되며 accident 보다 더 광범위하게 사용 가능(we can use it to talk about almost anything that happens, any single event.)
- 경찰이 범죄 조사에서 사용가능(The police use 'incident' to talk about possible crimes)
accident
- 우연히 일어난 일과 교통에 관련된 일에만 사용가능
- I think that the most important difference is that 'an accident' is something which happens purely by chance.
- It's especially common to use it when we are talking about traffic and vehicle collisions
> 교통에 관련하여 일반적으로 사용 가능
예문
incident
1. We don't talk about politics at home since the incident last summer.
2. Police are looking into the incident.
3. The incident(accident도 사용가능) occurred on Main Street at around 2:30 AM.
accident
1. He didn't mean to discover Post-it notes - he made them by accident.
2. She had an accident while she was skiing and broke her leg.
3. The car accident caused a big problem on the motorway.
출처 :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1837_aae/page21.shtml
Mark Shea answers:
Hi Richard - I can see the confusion here - the words even sound nearly the same!
I think that the most important difference is that 'an accident' is something which happens purely by chance, there was no intention involved, and we can?t really use 'incident' like this.
If you do something by accident, you don't mean to do it, perhaps it's something you do or did without thinking.
Post-it notes, for example, are little sticky pieces of paper that we use to write notes on. And they were discovered by accident when a scientist, who was trying to make a very strong glue created a very weak one instead. He didn't mean to discover Post-it notes - he made them by accident.
We often use 'accident' to describe something unpleasant or unfortunate ?
"She had an accident while she was skiing and broke her leg."
It's especially common to use it when we are talking about traffic and vehicle collisions ...
"The car accident caused a big problem on the motorway."
'An incident' is much more general - we can use it to talk about almost anything that happens, any single event. If we were describing a particular time when something went badly wrong, we might talk about "the incident last summer" for example.
It might be something completely intentional - someone deliberately starting an argument ...
"We don't talk about politics at home since the incident last summer. Li was looking for an argument and brought up the subject of the recent elections."
We couldn't call the argument 'an accident' because Li started it deliberately.
We often say 'incident' when we don't want to mention what actually happened, or sometimes if we want to make an event sound less important. The police use 'incident' to talk about possible crimes, if they're not yet sure if a crime has been committed. It's quite common to hear:
"Police are looking into the incident."
It means that they are investigating to see if someone has committed a crime.
So the biggest difference is that accidents are never intentional, but incidents might be!
I hope this answers your question Richard.
Mark Shea has been a teacher and teacher trainer for fifteen years. He has taught English and trained teachers extensively in Asia and South America, and is a qualified examiner for the University of Cambridge oral examinations. He is currently working with journalists and is the author of the BBC College of Journalism's online English tutor.