An incident is an event or occurrence, especially one that's noteworthy, unusual, or causes problems. When something happens that breaks the normal flow of the day, that's an incident.

At school, a fire drill is an incident that interrupts regular class time. If two students get into an argument on the playground, a teacher might write up an incident report describing what happened. Scientists tracking wildlife might record every incident of a bear entering a campground.

The word often suggests something negative or disruptive, but not always. A minor incident might be something small, like a brief power outage. A serious incident could mean something that requires immediate attention, like a chemical spill in a laboratory.

When people say something happened “without incident,” they mean it went smoothly with no problems at all. A field trip that returns without incident means everyone stayed safe and nothing went wrong.

Notice how incident differs from accident: an accident is always unintentional (like spilling milk), while an incident is simply something that happened, whether intentional or not. A student pulling a fire alarm as a prank is an incident, not an accident, because it was done on purpose.