accidental

• POS: Adjective, Noun
• HYPHEN: ac=ci=den=tal

CIDE DICTIONARY

accidental, a. [Cf. F. accidentel, earlier accidental.].

•  Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; casual; fortuitous; as, an accidental visit.  [1913 Webster]
•  Nonessential; not necessary belonging; incidental; as, are accidental to a play.  [1913 Webster]

Accidental chords (Mus.), those which contain one or more tones foreign to their proper harmony. -- Accidental colors (Opt.), colors depending on the hypersensibility of the retina of the eye for complementary colors. They are purely subjective sensations of color which often result from the contemplation of actually colored bodies. -- Accidental point (Persp.), the point in which a right line, drawn from the eye, parallel to a given right line, cuts the perspective plane; so called to distinguish it from the principal point, or point of view, where a line drawn from the eye perpendicular to the perspective plane meets this plane. -- Accidental lights (Paint.), secondary lights; effects of light other than ordinary daylight, such as the rays of the sun darting through a cloud, or between the leaves of trees; the effect of moonlight, candlelight, or burning bodies. Fairholt.

Syn. -- Casual; fortuitous; contingent; occasional; adventitious.

accidental, n. 

•  A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.  [1913 Webster]

  "He conceived it just that accidentals . . . should sink with the substance of the accusation."  [1913 Webster]
•  Those fortuitous effects produced by luminous rays falling on certain objects so that some parts stand forth in abnormal brightness and other parts are cast into a deep shadow.  [1913 Webster]
•  A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

accidental, adj. & n.
--adj.
1 happening by chance, unintentionally, or unexpectedly.
2 not essential to a conception; subsidiary.
--n.
1 Mus. a sign indicating a momentary departure from the key signature by raising or lowering a note.
2 something not essential to a conception.

Derivative

accidentally adv.

Etymology

ME f. LL accidentalis (as ACCIDENT)

THESAURUS

accidental

accessory, accident, accidentally, accompanying, addendum, addition, additional, adjunct, ado, adscititious, adventitious, afloat, afoot, aleatory, appendage, appurtenance, appurtenant, ascititious, auxiliary, breve, by-the-way, casual, casually, causeless, chance, chancy, circumstantial, coincident, coincidental, collateral, conditional, contingency, contingent, crotchet, current, demisemiquaver, dependent, destinal, dicey, doing, dominant, dominant note, double whole note, eighth note, enharmonic, enharmonic note, eventuating, extra, fatal, fatidic, flat, fluky, fortuitous, fortuitously, going on, half note, happening, happenstance, hemidemisemiquaver, iffy, in hand, in the wind, inadvertent, incidental, indeterminate, inessential, lucky, mere chance, minim, musical note, natural, nonessential, not-self, note, occasional, occurring, odd, on, on foot, ongoing, other, parenthetical, passing, patent note, prevailing, prevalent, provisional, quarter note, quaver, random, report, responding note, resultant, risky, secondary, semibreve, semiquaver, serendipitous, shaped note, sharp, sixteenth note, sixty-fourth note, spiccato, staccato, subsidiary, superadded, superaddition, superfluous, supervenient, supplement, supplemental, supplementary, sustained note, taking place, tercet, thirty-second note, tone, triplet, unanticipated, uncalculated, uncaused, under way, undesigned, undetermined, unessential, unexpected, unforeseeable, unforeseen, unintended, unintentional, unlooked-for, unlucky, unmeant, unplanned, unpredictable, unpremeditated, unpurposed, unwitting, whole note

ROGET THESAURUS

accidental

Chance

N chance, lot, fate, luck, good luck, mascot, speculation, venture, stake, game of chance, mere shot, random shot, blind bargain, leap in the dark, pig in a poke, fluke, potluck, faro bank, flyer, limit, uncertainty, uncertainty principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, drawing lots, sortilegy, sortition, sortes, sortes Virgilianae, rouge et noir, hazard, ante, chuck-a-luck, crack-loo, craps, faro, roulette, pitch and toss, chuck, farthing, cup tossing, heads or tails cross and pile, poker-dice, wager, bet, betting, gambling, the turf, gaming house, gambling house, betting house, bucket shop, gambling joint, totalizator, totalizer, hell, betting ring, dice, dice box, gambler, gamester, man of the turf, adventurer, dicer, fortuitous, unintentional, unintended, accidental, not meant, undesigned, purposed, unpremeditated, unforeseen, uncontemplated, never thought of, random, indiscriminate, promiscuous, undirected, aimless, driftless, designless, purposeless, causeless, without purpose, possible, unforeseeable, unpredictable, chancy, risky, speculative, dicey, randomly, by chance, fortuitously, unpredictably, unforeseeably, casually, unintentionally, unwittingly, en passant, by the way, incidentally, as it may happen, at random, at a venture, at haphazard, acierta errando, dextro tempore, fearful concatenation of circumstances, fortuitous combination of circumstances, le jeu est le fils d'avarice et le pere du desespo, the happy combination of fortuitous circumstances, the fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms, God does not play dice with the universe, chance, indetermination, accident, fortune, hazard, hap, haphazard, chance medley, random, luck, raccroc, casualty, contingence, adventure, hit, fate, equal chance, lottery, tombola, toss up, turn of the table, turn of the cards, hazard of the die, chapter of accidents, fickle finger of fate, cast of the dice, throw of the dice, heads or tails, flip of a coin, wheel of Fortune, sortes, sortes Virgilianae, probability, possibility, odds, long odds, run of luck, accidentalness, main chance, odds on, favorable odds, contingency, dependence (uncertainty), situation (circumstance), statistics, theory of Probabilities, theory of Chances, bookmaking, assurance, speculation, gaming, casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate, random, statistical, possible, unintentional, by chance, accidentally, by accident, casually, perchance, for aught one knows, as good would have it, as bad would have it, as luck would have it, as ill-luck would have it, as chance would have it, as it may be, as it may chance, as it may turn up, as it may happen, as the case may be, grasps the skirts of happy chance, the accident of an accident, There but for the grace of God go I, chance, lot, fate, luck, good luck, mascot, speculation, venture, stake, game of chance, mere shot, random shot, blind bargain, leap in the dark, pig in a poke, fluke, potluck, faro bank, flyer, limit, uncertainty, uncertainty principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, drawing lots, sortilegy, sortition, sortes, sortes Virgilianae, rouge et noir, hazard, ante, chuck-a-luck, crack-loo, craps, faro, roulette, pitch and toss, chuck, farthing, cup tossing, heads or tails cross and pile, poker-dice, wager, bet, betting, gambling, the turf, gaming house, gambling house, betting house, bucket shop, gambling joint, totalizator, totalizer, hell, betting ring, dice, dice box, gambler, gamester, man of the turf, adventurer, dicer, fortuitous, unintentional, unintended, accidental, not meant, undesigned, purposed, unpremeditated, unforeseen, uncontemplated, never thought of, random, indiscriminate, promiscuous, undirected, aimless, driftless, designless, purposeless, causeless, without purpose, possible, unforeseeable, unpredictable, chancy, risky, speculative, dicey, randomly, by chance, fortuitously, unpredictably, unforeseeably, casually, unintentionally, unwittingly, en passant, by the way, incidentally, as it may happen, at random, at a venture, at haphazard, acierta errando, dextro tempore, fearful concatenation of circumstances, fortuitous combination of circumstances, le jeu est le fils d'avarice et le pere du desespo, the happy combination of fortuitous circumstances, the fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms, God does not play dice with the universe, chance, indetermination, accident, fortune, hazard, hap, haphazard, chance medley, random, luck, raccroc, casualty, contingence, adventure, hit, fate, equal chance, lottery, tombola, toss up, turn of the table, turn of the cards, hazard of the die, chapter of accidents, fickle finger of fate, cast of the dice, throw of the dice, heads or tails, flip of a coin, wheel of Fortune, sortes, sortes Virgilianae, probability, possibility, odds, long odds, run of luck, accidentalness, main chance, odds on, favorable odds, contingency, dependence (uncertainty), situation (circumstance), statistics, theory of Probabilities, theory of Chances, bookmaking, assurance, speculation, gaming, casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate, random, statistical, possible, unintentional, by chance, accidentally, by accident, casually, perchance, for aught one knows, as good would have it, as bad would have it, as luck would have it, as ill-luck would have it, as chance would have it, as it may be, as it may chance, as it may turn up, as it may happen, as the case may be, grasps the skirts of happy chance, the accident of an accident, There but for the grace of God go I.

Extrinsicality

N extrinsicality, objectiveness, non ego, extraneousness, accident, appearance, phenomenon, derived from without, objective, extrinsic, extrinsical, extraneous, modal, adventitious, ascititious, adscititious, incidental, accidental, nonessential, contingent, fortuitous, implanted, ingrafted, inculcated, infused, outward, apparent, extrinsically.