accidental

  1. Adjective.  Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; casual; fortuitous.
  2. Adjective.  Nonessential; not necessary belonging; incidental.
  3. Adjective.  (music) Foreign to the key signature or a proper harmony.
  4. Adjective.  unintentional; by accident.
  5. Noun.  A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.
  6. Noun.  (context, in plural) 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.
  7. Noun.  (music) A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.