Cases

Cases are a plural noun with several specialized meanings in different disciplines. In law, a case refers to a matter brought before a court for adjudication, including civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings. A case typically involves parties such as a plaintiff and a defendant, a record of filings, arguments, evidence, and a judicial decision. The outcome may create legal precedent that informs future rulings.

In grammar, a case marks the syntactic or semantic function of a noun or pronoun. Case systems appear in many languages as inflections or articles. Common categories include nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), genitive (possession), and dative (indirect object). Some languages have extensive case inventories; others have few or none.

In logic and mathematics, a case can denote a particular instance or condition under consideration. Case analysis or proof by cases splits a problem into alternative possibilities and resolves each one separately.

In medicine and science, a case refers to a single patient or observation, reported in case reports or case series to illustrate phenomena, rare conditions, or treatment responses.

In computing, a case is a branch of a control structure, such as a switch-case statement, used to select among alternatives. The term also appears in phrases such as case sensitivity, case-insensitive matching, and container cases used for carrying items.

Other uses include idiomatic expressions like “in case of” and “case” as a synonym for an instance or example. The term has Latin roots from casus, meaning event or occurrence, and is widely used in modern English with domain-specific meanings.