Part 46

Syn. -- Accompanying; contributory; auxiliary; subsidiary; subservient; additional; acceding.

Ac*ces"so*ry, n.; pl. Accessories (&?;). 1. That which belongs to something else deemed the principal; something additional and subordinate. "The aspect and accessories of a den of banditti." Carlyle.

2. (Law) Same as Accessary, n.

3. (Fine Arts) Anything that enters into a work of art without being indispensably necessary, as mere ornamental parts. Elmes.

Syn. -- Abettor; accomplice; ally; coadjutor. See Abettor.

||Ac*ciac`ca*tu"ra (&?;), n. [It., from acciaccare to crush.] (Mus.) A short grace note, one semitone below the note to which it is prefixed; -- used especially in organ music. Now used as equivalent to the short appoggiatura.

Ac"ci*dence (&?;), n. [A corruption of Eng. accidents, pl. of accident. See Accident, 2.] 1. The accidents, of inflections of words; the rudiments of grammar. Milton.

2. The rudiments of any subject. Lowell.

Ac"ci*dent (&?;), n. [F. accident, fr. L. accidens, -dentis, p. pr. of accidere to happen; ad + cadere to fall. See Cadence, Case.] 1. Literally, a befalling; an event that takes place without one's foresight or expectation; an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event; chance; contingency; often, an undesigned and unforeseen occurrence of an afflictive or unfortunate character; a casualty; a mishap; as, to die by an accident.

Of moving accidents by flood and field. Shak.

Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident: It is the very place God meant for thee. Trench.

2. (Gram.) A property attached to a word, but not essential to it, as gender, number, case.

3. (Her.) A point or mark which may be retained or omitted in a coat of arms.

4. (Log.) (a) A property or quality of a thing which is not essential to it, as whiteness in paper; an attribute. (b) A quality or attribute in distinction from the substance, as sweetness, softness.

5. Any accidental property, fact, or relation; an accidental or nonessential; as, beauty is an accident.

This accident, as I call it, of Athens being situated some miles from the sea. J. P. Mahaffy.

6. Unusual appearance or effect. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Accident, in Law, is equivalent to casus, or such unforeseen, extraordinary, extraneous interference as is out of the range of ordinary calculation.

Ac`ci*den"tal (&?;), a. [Cf. F. accidentel, earlier accidental.] 1. Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; casual; fortuitous; as, an accidental visit.

2. 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. -- 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.

Ac`ci*den"tal (&?;), n. 1. 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.

2. 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.

3. (Mus.) A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.

Ac`ci*den"tal*ism (&?;), n. Accidental character or effect. Ruskin.

Ac`ci*den*tal"i*ty (&?;), n. The quality of being accidental; accidentalness. [R.] Coleridge.