STATE OF AFFAIRS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does state of affairs mean? 

• STATE OF AFFAIRS (noun)
  The noun STATE OF AFFAIRS has 1 sense:

1. the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time

  Familiarity information: STATE OF AFFAIRS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STATE OF AFFAIRS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

situation; state of affairs

Context example:

eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation

Hypernyms ("state of affairs" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "state of affairs"):

exclusion (the state of being excluded)

thing (a special situation)

status quo (the existing state of affairs)

square one (the situation in which you begin an endeavor and to which you return if your efforts fail)

size; size of it (the actual state of affairs)

rejection (the state of being rejected)

prison; prison house (a prisonlike situation; a place of seeming confinement)

picture; scene (a situation treated as an observable object)

intestacy (the situation of being or dying without a legally valid will)

inclusion (the state of being included)

hotbed (a situation that is ideal for rapid development (especially of something bad))

fish bowl; fishbowl; goldfish bowl (a state of affairs in which you have no privacy)

absurd; the absurd (a situation in which life seems irrational and meaningless)

equilibrium (a stable situation in which forces cancel one another)

environment (the totality of surrounding conditions)

element (the situation in which you are happiest and most effective)

disequilibrium (loss of equilibrium attributable to an unstable situation in which some forces outweigh others)

crowding (a situation in which people or things are crowded together)

complication (a situation or condition that is complex or confused)

childlessness (the condition of being without offspring)

challenge (a demanding or stimulating situation)

ballgame; new ballgame (a particular situation that is radically different from the preceding situation)

acceptance (the state of being acceptable and accepted)

 Context examples 

I will account for this state of affairs (pointing to the bed): and now return to your own room.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A condition of a document indicating its relative position or state of affairs in relation to other documents and/or activities, especially in regard to document processing.

(Document Status, NCI Thesaurus)

Well, Mr. Holmes, that was the state of affairs when I first saw you two days ago.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He could not explain the true state of affairs without betraying one who certainly deserved little enough consideration at his hands.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of affairs obtained that no member of the pack could run outside the pack.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It was not until we had reached home that I began to realize the true state of affairs.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This unfortunate state of affairs has severely impeded treatment development, leaving the many people who suffer from depression with limited options.

(Forty-Four Genomic Variants Linked to Major Depression, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Mr. Yates took the subject from his friend as soon as possible, and immediately gave Sir Thomas an account of what they had done and were doing: told him of the gradual increase of their views, the happy conclusion of their first difficulties, and present promising state of affairs; relating everything with so blind an interest as made him not only totally unconscious of the uneasy movements of many of his friends as they sat, the change of countenance, the fidget, the hem! of unquietness, but prevented him even from seeing the expression of the face on which his own eyes were fixed—from seeing Sir Thomas's dark brow contract as he looked with inquiring earnestness at his daughters and Edmund, dwelling particularly on the latter, and speaking a language, a remonstrance, a reproof, which he felt at his heart.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

If they left him alone, he left them alone—a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Such was the state of affairs in the month of July; and Fanny had just reached her eighteenth year, when the society of the village received an addition in the brother and sister of Mrs. Grant, a Mr. and Miss Crawford, the children of her mother by a second marriage.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)