case

Plural: cases

Noun

• an occurrence of something
  • "it was a case of bad judgment"
• a special set of circumstances
  • "it may rain in which case the picnic will be canceled"
• a comprehensive term for any proceeding in a court of law whereby an individual seeks a legal remedy
• the actual state of things
  • "that was not the case"
• a portable container for carrying several objects
  • "the musicians left their instrument cases backstage"
• a person requiring professional services
  • "a typical case was the suburban housewife described by a marriage counselor"
• a person who is subjected to experimental or other observational procedures; someone who is an object of investigation
  • "the cases that we studied were drawn from two different communities"
• a problem requiring investigation
  • "Perry Mason solved the case of the missing heir"
• a statement of facts and reasons used to support an argument
  • "he stated his case clearly"
• the quantity contained in a case
• nouns or pronouns or adjectives (often marked by inflection) related in some way to other words in a sentence
• a specific state of mind that is temporary
  • "a case of the jitters"
• a person of a specified kind (usually with many eccentricities)
  • "a mental case"
• a specific size and style of type within a type family
• an enveloping structure or covering enclosing an animal or plant organ or part
• the housing or outer covering of something
  • "the clock has a walnut case"
• the enclosing frame around a door or window opening
• (printing) the receptacle in which a compositor has his type, which is divided into compartments for the different letters, spaces, or numbers
  • "for English, a compositor will ordinarily have two such cases, the upper case containing the capitals and the lower case containing the small letters"
• bed linen consisting of a cover for a pillow
  • "the burglar carried his loot in a pillowcase"
• a glass container used to store and display items in a shop or museum or home
• An actual event, situation, or fact.
• A given condition or state.
• A piece of work, specifically defined within a profession; the set of tasks involved in addressing the situation of a specific person or event.
• An instance or event as a topic of study.
• A legal proceeding; a lawsuit or prosecution.
• A specific inflection of a word (particularly a noun, pronoun, or adjective) depending on its function in the sentence.
• Grammatical cases and their meanings taken either as a topic in general or within a specific language.
• An instance of a specific condition or set of symptoms.
• A section of code representing one of the actions of a conditional switch.
• A love affair.
• A box that contains or can contain a number of identical items of manufacture.
• A box, sheath, or covering generally.
• A piece of luggage that can be used to transport an apparatus such as a sewing machine.
• An enclosing frame or casing.
• A suitcase.
• A piece of furniture, constructed partially of transparent glass or plastic, within which items can be displayed.
• The outer covering or framework of a piece of apparatus such as a computer.
• A shallow tray divided into compartments or "boxes" for holding type, traditionally arranged in sets of two, the "upper case" (containing capitals, small capitals, accented) and "lower case" (small letters, figures, punctuation marks, quadrats, and spaces).
• The nature of a piece of alphabetic type, whether a “capital” (upper case) or “small” (lower case) letter.
• Four of a kind.
• A unit of liquid measure used to measure sales in the beverage industry, equivalent to 192 fluid ounces.
• A small fissure which admits water into the workings.
• A thin layer of harder metal on the surface of an object whose deeper metal is allowed to remain soft.
• A cardboard box that holds (usually 24) beer bottles or cans.
• A counterfeit crown (five-shilling coin).

Verb

Verb Forms: cased, casing, cases

• To put or enclose something in a case or container.
• look over, usually with the intention to rob
  • "They men cased the housed"
• enclose in, or as if in, a case
  • "my feet were encased in mud"
• To propose hypothetical cases.
• To place (an item or items of manufacture) into a box, as in preparation for shipment.
• To cover or protect with, or as if with, a case; to enclose.
• To survey (a building or other location) surreptitiously, as in preparation for a robbery.

Adj

• The last remaining card of a particular rank.

Examples

• a case for spectacles; the case of a watch
• a door case; a window case
• a single case of Bud Light
• For a change, in this case, he was telling the truth.
• He drew the case eight!
• He tried to CASE his strategy, hiding his intentions until the final moves.
• In case of fire, break glass. [sign on fire extinguisher holder in public space]
• It is not the case that every unfamiliar phrase is an idiom.
• It was one of the detective's easiest cases.
• Jane has been studying case in Caucasian languages.
• Latin has six cases, and remnants of a seventh.
• Latin is a language that employs case.
• Social workers should work on a maximum of forty active cases.
• The accusative case most commonly indicates a direct object.
• The doctor told us of an interesting case he had treated that morning.
• The teaching consists of theory lessons and case studies.
• There were another five cases reported overnight.

Synonyms

caseful, casing, causa, cause, character, compositor's case, display case, eccentric, encase, event, example, face, font, fount, grammatical case, guinea pig, incase, instance, lawsuit, pillow slip, pillowcase, sheath, shell, showcase, slip, subject, suit, type, typeface, typesetter's case, vitrine, befall, carton

Antonyms

noncase

Anagrams of case