A fatal accident vs a fateful accident [closed]
Solution 1:
Both fatal and fateful derive from the notion of fate.
Fate per the OED is:
The principle, power, or agency by which, according to certain philosophical and popular systems of belief, all events, or some events in particular, are unalterably predetermined from eternity. Often personified.
It derives from the Latin fatum - (lit) that which has been spoken.
However fatal and fateful have come to have very different meanings in modern English.
Whilst fatal often involves death (as in a fatal accident), it always implies failure and disaster.
The OP's definition of fateful 'having far reaching and disastrous consequences or implications' appears to be taken from Oxford Dictionaries OnLine. However, the OED, which is far more detailed, provides many senses of fateful including the one which I think is most important to today's usage.
Whilst fatal seems to have lost its link to fate (in the sense of destiny), fateful in my view retains a strong idea of destiny. That is not evident from the ODO. But if you look at sense 3 of fateful per the OED it says this:
Marked by the influence of fate; controlled as if by irresistible destiny..
The following are all five of the senses of fateful per the OED. I am speaking for myself as a British person (born 1944) when I say that senses 1 to 3 are the most significant to me. That does not appear to me to be the same as the view taken by the ODO. I am actually quite astonished that the ODO meaning nowhere includes the idea of fate or destiny in its description of fateful.
In answer to the OP's direct question, whilst it is possible to survive a fateful accident (assuming you believe in fate), the only way to survive a fatal accident would be if it was someone else in the car who died, and you were a survivor.
- Of a voice or utterance: Revealing the decrees of fate; prophetic of destiny.
1720 Pope tr. Homer Iliad V. xix. 465 Then ceas'd for ever, by the Furies ty'd, His fate-ful Voice.
1794 S. T. Coleridge Melancholy A mystic tumult and a fateful rhyme.
1850 T. Carlyle Latter-day Pamphlets i. 39 That fateful Hebrew Prophecy.
1863 H. W. Longfellow Tales Wayside Inn ii. Prel. 105 The fateful cawings of the crow.
1878 B. Taylor Prince Deukalion ii. v. 84 The fateful words, ‘Rise Brother’.
- Fraught with destiny, bearing with it or involving momentous consequences; decisive, important. Chiefly of a period of time.
1800 S. T. Coleridge tr. Schiller Death Wallenstein iii. viii. 92
A fateful evening doth descend upon us.1850 W. Irving Mahomet (1853) ix. 35 The fateful banner of Khaled.
1861 Romance of a Dull Life xiii. 97 Each minute seemed fateful to her.
1884 E. P. Roe Nature's Serial Story xii, in Harper's Mag. Nov. 907/1 A fateful conference..was taking place.
- Marked by the influence of fate; controlled as if by irresistible destiny.
1876 S. A. Brooke Primer Eng. Lit. 130 The Bride of Lammermoor, as great in fateful pathos as Romeo and Juliet.
1885 Pall Mall Gaz. 17 Feb. 6/2 That fateful inability to review their position.
1891 Times 14 Feb. 7/5 Peasants..begin..their..wanderings from place to place in an aimless, fateful sort of way.
1891 E. Peacock Narcissa Brendon I. 229 As fateful as a Greek tragedy.
- Bringing fate or death; deadly; = fatal adj. 6.
1764 J. Grainger Sugar-cane iv. 134 Nor fateful only is the bursting flame.
1798 Anti-Jacobin 26 Feb. 126/2 Resounds the fateful dart.
1807 J. Barlow Columbiad iv. 149 The soldier's fateful steel.
- Having a remarkable fate; of eventful history.
1886 G. T. Stokes Ireland & Celtic Church (1888) 108 (note) , This fateful book is said to be still in existence.
Solution 2:
Fate - The sense of "causing or attended with death" in English is from early 15c.
The New Fowler's English Usage -
Fatal and fateful- the words are etymologically closely related in that they both contained or contain the element fate.
In times past they shared a number of senses, 'prophetic', 'fraught with destiny', and even 'producing or resulting in death'.
But the two words have substantially drawn apart. Now fatal alone means 'causing or ending in death' (a fatal accident).