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incident [incident 词源字典]: incident: [15] An incident is literally that which ‘befalls’. In common with accident and occident, and a wide range of other English words, from cadaver to occasion, it comes ultimately from Latin cadere ‘fall’. This was combined with the prefix in- ‘on’ to produce incidere ‘fall on’, hence ‘befall, happen to’. Its present participial stem incident- passed into English either directly or via French.

The use of a word that literally means ‘fall’ to denote the concept of ‘happening’ is quite a common phenomenon. It occurs also in befall and chance, and operates in other languages than English; Welsh digwydd ‘happen’, for instance, is derived from cwyddo ‘fall’.
=> accident, cadence, case, occasion[incident etymology, incident origin, 英语词源]
squat: squat: [13] Someone who squats is etymologically ‘forced together’ – and indeed the verb originally meant ‘squash, flatten’ in English (‘This stone shall fall on such men, and squat them all to powder’, John Wyclif, Sermons 1380). Not until the early 15th century did the modern sense (based on the notion of hunching oneself up small and low) emerge. The word was adapted from Old French esquatir, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix es- and quatir ‘press flat’.

This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *coactīre ‘press together’, a verb based on Latin coāctus, the past participle of cōgere ‘force together’ (from which English gets cogent [17]). The adjectival use of squat for ‘thickset’, which preserves some of the word’s original connotations of being ‘flattened’, is first recorded in 1630. Swat ‘slap’ [17] originated as a variant of squat.
=> cogent, swat
symptom: symptom: [16] A symptom is etymologically something that ‘happens’ – an occurrence or phenomenon. The word’s application to physiological phenomena as signs of disease is a secondary development. It comes via late Latin symptōma from Greek súmptōma ‘occurrence’, a derivative of sumpíptein ‘fall together’, hence ‘fall on, happen to’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix sun- ‘together’ and píptein ‘fall’.
curse (n.): late Old English curs "a prayer that evil or harm befall one," of uncertain origin, perhaps from Old French curuz "anger," or Latin cursus "course." Connection with cross is unlikely. No similar word exists in Germanic, Romance, or Celtic. Curses as a histrionic exclamation is from 1885. The curse "menstruation" is from 1930. Curse of Scotland, the 9 of diamonds in cards, is attested from 1791, but the origin is obscure.
slant (v.): 1520s, "to strike obliquely" (against something), alteration of slenten "slip sideways" (c. 1300), perhaps via a Scandinavian source (compare Swedish slinta "to slip," Norwegian slenta "to fall on one side"), from Proto-Germanic *slintanan. Intransitive sense of "to slope, to lie obliquely" is first recorded 1690s; transitive sense of "to give a sloping direction to" is from 1805. Related: Slanted; slanting. As an adverb from late 15c.; as an adjective from 1610s. Slant rhyme attested from 1944.