Crossword clues for accidental
accidental
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Accidental \Ac`ci*den"tal\, n.
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A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.
He conceived it just that accidentals . . . should sink with the substance of the accusation.
--Fuller. pl. (Paint.) 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.
(Mus.) A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.
Accidental \Ac`ci*den"tal\, 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.
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Nonessential; not necessary belonging; incidental; as, are accidental to a play.
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.
Usage: Accidental, Incidental, Casual, Fortuitous, Contingent. We speak of a thing as accidental when it falls out as by chance, and not in the regular course of things; as, an accidental meeting, an accidental advantage, etc. We call a thing incidental when it falls, as it were, into some regular course of things, but is secondary, and forms no essential part thereof; as, an incremental remark, an incidental evil, an incidental benefit. We speak of a thing as casual, when it falls out or happens, as it were, by mere chance, without being prearranged or premeditated; as, a casual remark or encounter; a casual observer. An idea of the unimportant is attached to what is casual. Fortuitous is applied to what occurs without any known cause, and in opposition to what has been foreseen; as, a fortuitous concourse of atoms. We call a thing contingent when it is such that, considered in itself, it may or may not happen, but is dependent for its existence on something else; as, the time of my coming will be contingent on intelligence yet to be received.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "non-essential," from Old French accidentel or directly from Medieval Latin accidentalis, from Latin accidentem (see accident). Meaning "outside the normal course of nature" is from early 15c.; that of "coming by chance" is from 1570s.
late 14c., "non-essential quality," from accidental (adj.). The musical sense is from 1868.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Not essential; incidental, secondary. (from 14th c.) 2 (context philosophy English) nonessential to something's inherent nature (especially in Aristotelian thought). (from 14th c.) 3 (context music English) Adjusted by one or two semitones, in temporary departure from the key signature. (from 16th c.) 4 Occurring sometimes, by chance; occasional. (from 16th c.) 5 happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; by accident, unintentional. (from 16th c.) 6 (context geometry English) Being a double point with two distinct tangent planes in 4-dimensional projective space. n. 1 A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally. 2 (context painting pluralonly English) 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. 3 (context music English) A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.
WordNet
n. a musical notation that makes a note sharp or flat or natural although that is not part of the key signature
adj. associated by chance and not an integral part; "poetry is something to which words are the accidental, not by any means the essential form"- Frederick W. Robertson; "they had to decide whether his misconduct was adventitious or the result of a flaw in his character" [syn: adventitious]
occurring or appearing or singled out by chance; "their accidental meeting led to a renewal of their friendship"; "seek help from casual passers-by"; "a casual meeting"; "a chance occurrence" [syn: casual, chance(a)]
without intention (especially resulting from heedless action); "with an inadvertent gesture she swept the vase off the table"; "accidental poisoning"; "an accidental shooting" [syn: inadvertent]
Wikipedia
Accidental may mean:
- Accidental (music), a symbol which changes the pitch of a note
- Accidental (album), by Fred Frith
- Accidental (biology), a biological phenomenon more commonly known as vagrancy
- Accidental property, a philosophical term
Accidental (Music for Dance Volume 3) is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is the third of a series of Music for Dance albums Frith made, and was recorded between December 1995 and January 1996 at Studio Jankowski in Stuttgart, Germany. The album was released on CD in March 2002 on Fred Records and was the first release in Frith's archival release program on the record label.
In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch (or pitch class) that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the sharp , flat , and natural symbols, among others, mark such notes—and those symbols are also called accidentals. In the measure (bar) where it appears, an accidental sign raises or lowers the immediately following note (and any repetition of it in the bar) from its normal pitch, overriding sharps or flats (or their absence) in the key signature. A note is usually raised or lowered by a semitone, although microtonal music may use "fractional" accidental signs. One occasionally sees double sharps or flats, which raise or lower the indicated note by a whole tone. Accidentals apply within the measure and octave in which they appear, unless canceled by another accidental sign, or tied into a following measure. If a note has an accidental and the note is repeated in a different octave within the same measure, the accidental does not apply to the same note of the different octave.
The modern accidental signs derive from the two forms of the lower-case letter b used in Gregorian chant manuscripts to signify the two pitches of B, the only note that could be altered. The "round" b became the flat sign, while the "square" b diverged into the sharp and natural signs.
Sometimes the black keys on a musical keyboard are called accidentals or sharps, and the white keys are called naturals.
Usage examples of "accidental".
Matter, then, thus brought to order must lose its own nature in the supreme degree unless its baseness is an accidental: if it is base in the sense of being Baseness the Absolute, it could never participate in order, and, if evil in the sense of being Evil the Absolute, it could never participate in good.
Some of the resemblances between Pitcairn and New Zealand adze types may therefore be accidental.
The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the accidental distinctions of birth and fortune, reserve their esteem for the superior qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are so plentifully endowed.
For example, when the boy, after leaving school, is set to fill an order in a wholesale drug store, he will in the one experience be compelled to use various phases of his chemical, arithmetical, writing, and bookkeeping knowledge, and that perhaps in the midst of a mass of other accidental impressions.
In each particular human being we must admit the existence of the authentic Intellective Act and of the authentically knowable object--though not as wholly merged into our being, since we are not these in the absolute and not exclusively these--and hence our longing for absolute things: it is the expression of our intellective activities: if we sometimes care for the partial, that affection is not direct but accidental, like our knowledge that a given triangular figure is made up of two right angles because the absolute triangle is so.
Medical Examiner accept my verdict of death due to an accidental overdose of barbital and avoid the additional unpleasantness of an autopsy.
If this injury had been accidental, he hated to contemplate what Colonel Bogey could do to his enemies by design.
It is palpable, undisguised grease, floating in rivers--not grease caused by accidental bad cookery, but grease on purpose.
Looking up at immense ancient buildings whose soaring stone facades had been carved by the virulent erosive air and acid rains into a phantasmagoria of accidental Gothic parapets and turrets and pinnacles and asymmetrical spires.
Similarly, animals whose lifestyles carry a high risk of accidental death are evolutionarily programmed to stint on repair and to age rapidly, even when living in the well-nourished safety of a laboratory cage.
In a meeting between representatives of both worlds, a delegate from Apox Five had referred to humans as a regrettably accidental evolution of a virus that sweeps from system to system devouring whatever they could get their furless hands upon.
Beginning from the bottom on the left-hand side, there was a dot - it was too neatly circular to be accidental - a flat-topped equilateral triangle, a pentagon and then a heptagonal figure.
The existence of accidental nigrities rests on well-established facts which are distinctly different from the pigmentation of purpura, icterus, or that produced by metallic salts.
There is nothing disquieting in omnipresence after this mode where there is no appropriation: in the same accidental way, we may reasonably put it, soul concurs with body, but it is soul self-holding, not inbound with Matter, free even of the body which it has illuminated through and through.
Why, even in self-defense, to prevent Ommony from making capital out of the accidental shooting of that jungli, he would be obliged to make out as black a case against him as possible.