- juncture
- juncture,[/p] pass, exigency, emergency, contingency, pinch, strait, crisis denote a critical or crucial time or state of affairs (as in the life of a person or institution or the history of a country).Juncture emphasizes the significant concurrence or convergence of events and usually indicates a discernible turning point{
we may now be at a vital juncture where the ideals of liberalism can best be achieved through separate institutions and not the omnicompetent state— Kurtz
}{the Church of England is at the present juncture the one church upon which the duty of working towards reunion most devolves— T. S. Eliot
}Pass implies a concurrence or convergence of events or a condition induced by such that is evil, distressing, or sometimes utterly confusing{have his daughters brought him to this passl—Shak.
}{Constance, after . . . reflection on the frightful pass to which destiny had brought her, had said that she supposed she would have to manage with a charwoman until Rose's advent— Bennett
}{things have come to a pretty pass when a professional informer ... is himself under investigation— New Republic
}Exigency (see also NEED) strongly emphasizes the pressure or restrictions of necessity or the urgency of the demands created by a juncture or pass{it would have been an unwise attempt to provide, by immutable rules, for exigencies which, if foreseen at all, must have been seen dimly and which can be best provided for as they occur— John Marshall
}{regret that the exigencies of party politics should deprive our government of so much talent— AItschul
}Emergency implies a sudden or unforeseen juncture that necessitates immediate action to avoid disaster; the term need not imply that what constitutes an emergency has also the quality of an exigency, for the latter term is far stronger in its suggestion of extreme difficulty{it was a special provision ... to meet a present emergency, and nothing more— Taney
}{a presence of mind which no emergency can perturb— Eliot
}Contingency is used of a prospective event or concurrence of events that is fortuitous and is uncertain in respect to either or both the time and the fact of occurrence but that, if it should come to pass, would constitute an exigency or emergency{having thus devised a plan for use in a contingency, Calhoun sought in various ways to prevent the contingency from coming— U. B. Phillips
}{every citizen must have a stake in his country adequate to justify in his eyes the sacrifices that any contingency may entail— W. O. Douglas
}{to be dug out now and then in the winter is a contingency the mail driver reckons as part of his daily life— Jefferies
}Pinch suggests pressure and the need for action but without the same intensity as emergency or exigency ; it is particularly appropriate for use of a juncture in personal affairs{I could always in a pinch pawn my microscope for three pounds— Maugham
}{ready in a pinch to ride roughshod over opposition— Power
}{this—the great pinch of his life— Hawthorne
}Strait, often in its plural straits, applies to a situation from which the person involved finds it difficult to escape, so hampered or fettered is he by some given or implied set of circumstances{he was in great straits for lack of money
}{this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day— Dickens
}{he was at a loss what to invent to detain him .... He rendered homage to the genius of woman in these straits. "My Aunt," he thought, "would have the lie ready"— Meredith
}{the army's truly desperate straits— Mason
}Crisis applies to a juncture or pass whose outcome will make a decisive difference, for good or ill, in a life or a history or a disease. The term usually connotes suspense, but need not imply either evil in the situation or a particular outcome{the pneumonia patient has passed the crisis
}{Tiberius gave one million pounds out of his own pocket to relieve the agrarian crisis of A.D. 33— Buchan
}{Father finally . . . brought the matter to a crisis. He said, after all, the boy had a right to choose— Mary Austin
}{her adolescence had passed without the trace of a religious crisis— Huxley
}Analogous words: *state, posture, situation, condition, status: *predicament, plight, quandary
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
