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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

accidental.

Pertaining to accident and not essence; thus, inessential; incidental; secondary.

10 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˌæk.sɪˈdɛn.tl̩/
  1. Pertaining to accident and not essence; thus, inessential; incidental; secondary.

  2. Pertaining to accident and not essence; thus, inessential; incidental; secondary. Nonessential to something's inherent nature (especially in Aristotelian thought).

  3. Adjusted by one or two semitones, in temporary departure from the key signature.

  4. Occurring sometimes, by chance; occasional.

  5. Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; by accident, unintentional.

    The discovery was purely accidental.
    He was killed by an accidental gunshot.
  6. Being a double point with two distinct tangent planes in 4-dimensional projective space.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English accidental, from Anglo-Norman accidentel, Middle French accidentel, accidental, and their source, Late Latin accidēntālis; corresponding to accident + -al.

noun/ˌæk.sɪˈdɛn.tl̩/
  1. A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.

  2. 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.

    plural · plural-only
  3. A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.

  4. Part of a text that has a mainly structural purpose, such as spelling, punctuation, or capitalization.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English accidental, from Anglo-Norman accidentel, Middle French accidentel, accidental, and their source, Late Latin accidēntālis; corresponding to accident + -al.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.