waiting to happen
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.82 in modern English
26
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "an accident waiting to happen, a divorce waiting to happen"
- "On the most prosaic level, there’s the section in the show when what appears to be a giant rope made of knotted sheets ascends to the roof and transforms itself into a swing. Bono selects a fan from the front row in an echo of U2’s fabled Live Aid performance, seats them in the swing and pushes them out over the audience: with the best will in the world, this seems less like stagecraft than an injury lawsuit waiting to happen."
Etymology
Modeled after accident waiting to happen and disaster waiting to happen; more generic uses outside of those phrases apparently started decades later, c. 1960s.