happen to

phrasal verb

happened to; happening to; happens to
: to affect or involve (someone or something) as the result of an event or action
An odd thing happened to me on my way to the office last week.
I wonder what/whatever happened to that guy after he lost his job.
especially : to affect (someone or something) in a bad or harmful way
I promise nothing will happen to you.
What happened to the car? There's a big scratch on the fender.

Examples of happen to in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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Nvidia got a jump on its rivals by realizing that its chips, initially made for rendering graphics, happened to be perfectly suited for training neural networks, the programs that underpin modern AI. Billy Perrigo, TIME, 10 Dec. 2024 This makes the voters’ decision to ignore the year’s best drama — which happens to be a foreign-language series — even more disappointing. Joey Nolfi, EW.com, 9 Dec. 2024 China concluded that their path to prevent the potential of the same thing from happening to them was to attempt to thwart the key element of U.S. military dominance—American airpower—by arraying their defenses in a manner known as anti-access/area denial or A2/AD. David A. Deptula, Forbes, 9 Dec. 2024 And in a twist worthy of Storage Wars, one of the company’s employees happened to be a huge Night Flight fan. Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork, 9 Dec. 2024 See all Example Sentences for happen to 

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Cite this Entry

“Happen to.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happen%20to. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.

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