Before proceeding to determine the meaning of the term case, it is necessary to discover its etymological origin. Specifically, we can establish that it derives the Latin, exactly from the word “casus”, which can be translated as “luck”, “accident” and “chance”.
It is a concept that refers to a fact, an event or a matter. For example: “I don’t know how we are going to solve González’s case”, “I was always interested in police cases, that’s why I decided to be a journalist”, “The coach is already fed up with the Arriaga case: if the player does not resume training in over the next few days, the technical director will ask the club president to terminate his contract ”.
The case idea usually refers to an event that had a great impact on society. Thus, when talking about “someone’s case”, people usually have knowledge of the subject in question.
The Madeleine Case, to name one, refers to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. When she was about to turn 4 years old, Madeleine disappeared from the hotel where she spent the holidays with her parents, in Portugal. Since then (May 2007), nothing has been heard from the little girl. The media often refer to the Madeleine Case to report on the news of the investigation.
In addition to all the above, we cannot ignore the existence of a Spanish weekly newspaper focused on events that responded to the name of “El Caso”. It was published from 1952 to 1987 and was founded in Madrid by Eugenio Suárez Gómez.
It was popularly known as “the newspaper of the porters” and it became a reference in the press given the significant number of copies it managed to sell. So much so that on some occasion, as in the case of the Jarabo crime, it managed to exhaust its entire circulation of 500,000 copies.
Precisely from the singularity of this means of communication, a television series entitled “El Caso. Chronicle of events ”. This 13-episode production has been broadcast on Spanish Television, which is an idea of the actor Fernando Guillén Cuervo. This actor who, in addition, has been the protagonist of it.
This series narrates the day-to-day work of the journalists who make up the staff of that event newspaper and how they manage to bring to light the most relevant cases of crimes, robberies, murders and kidnappings of the moment. Verónica Sánchez or Natalia Verbeke are other of the actresses who participated in this program.
In the field of medicine, the concept of clinical case refers to the description of what a person experiences during an illness, together with the data provided by clinical studies, diagnoses, etc. It can be said that the clinical case consists of the collection and presentation of the signs, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of a patient.
A use case, on the other hand, consists of the description of the tasks that must be performed to complete a certain process. This expression is often used in the field of software.
