tilfeller

Tilfeller is a plural noun in Norwegian and Danish meaning a case, instance, or occurrence of something. The corresponding singular forms are tilfelle in Norwegian and tilfælde in Danish. In Swedish, the closest common form is tillfällen, which has a similar meaning but a distinct spelling. The word and its cognates are used to refer to discrete events, incidents, or counts of items within a category.

Usage and contexts: Tilfeller is widely used in epidemiology, statistics, law, and everyday language to describe individual events or to count how many times something occurs. For example, in health reporting one speaks of the number of tilfeller of a disease. In ordinary speech, it can mean “this case” or “these occurrences” depending on the context.

Grammatical notes: Tilfeller is a countable plural; it combines with numerals and determiners such as noen fler tilfeller or flere tilfeller, and the singular is tilfelle (Norwegian) or tilfælde (Danish). In phrases like i dette tilfellet, the expression means “in this case” and is common in Norwegian.

Cross-linguistic perspective: While Norwegian and Danish share the form tilfeller, Swedish uses tillfällen as the standard plural, with slightly different usage patterns. The general semantic field—cases, occurrences, or occasions—remains similar across the Scandinavian languages, though exact collocations and idioms differ.

See also: tilfelle (singular form), tillfälle (Swedish cognate concepts), epidemiology terms for cases and incidents.