happen on/upon something/someone

happen | Business English

happen
verb[ I ]
uk /ˈhæpən/us
to exist or begin to exist because of an action, situation, or event:
The one course of events no one anticipated was the one that happened: a long period of stagnation that threatened the assumptions of the European welfare state.
The market highs have provided an impetus for companies to sell their shares before investors lose interest, which often happens during a holiday week.
to be done or exist by chance:
What happens in one country or region may not happen in another.
happen by accident/chance"The state's economic vitality has not happened by accident," he said.
 happen to sb/sth
to affect someone or something in a way that changes something:
Everywhere I go people are becoming more and more depressed by what is happening to their savings.
  happen overnight
to be done or come into existence suddenly:
did not/may not/will not happen overnightThis crisis didn't happen overnight.

Examples of happen

happen
If they do, judgments must be made about why this has happened and a further contribution to our knowledge is achieved.
In existing herding models, either a crisis happens or it does not.
However, it happened that another criterion was to hand.
A key question, therefore, is just what happens to language learning as we get older.
What happens, in fact, is that the major par t of the approximant itself is devoiced.
Growing up in a small country also keeps you aware of what happens in other parts of the world.
Is it helpful in understanding things that they see happening?
Now consider what happens if learning plays a role.
Think of something that has happened to you or someone you know and tell us about it.
With a small number of exceptions, this has not happened thus far.
One trembles to think what would have happened to our country had we not chosen that remarkable woman to lead us.
A natural idea is to look at what happens when the regularisation parameters vanishes.
What happens if, instead, all the new funds are used to purchase additional livestock in the same proportion as current livestock holdings?
They formulate a critical archaeology that recognises the struggles against individualism, against the limits of the possible, and then asks what happened to the alternatives.
However, what we have experienced in historical times does not encompass the full range of what happened in the past.
See all examples of happen
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.