Synonym Chooser

How does the adjective accidental differ from other similar words?

Some common synonyms of accidental are casual, contingent, and fortuitous. While all these words mean "not amenable to planning or prediction," accidental stresses chance.

any resemblance to actual persons is entirely accidental

When might casual be a better fit than accidental?

In some situations, the words casual and accidental are roughly equivalent. However, casual stresses lack of real or apparent premeditation or intent.

a casual encounter with a stranger

When is it sensible to use contingent instead of accidental?

While in some cases nearly identical to accidental, contingent suggests possibility of happening but stresses uncertainty and dependence on other future events for existence or occurrence.

the contingent effects of the proposed law

When can fortuitous be used instead of accidental?

While the synonyms fortuitous and accidental are close in meaning, fortuitous so strongly suggests chance that it often connotes entire absence of cause.

a series of fortuitous events

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of accidental The deaths on White Lotus tends to be random and accidental. Eliana Dockterman, TIME, 24 Feb. 2025 Moore plays an author who heads to the Scottish coast to grieve the accidental drowning of her young son. Eddie Mouradian, Vulture, 24 Feb. 2025 Garrett is lost in guilt over the accidental death of a friend, and suffers from dreamlike depressive episodes. Maxim Loskutoff, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2025 As the largest startup offering cyber insurance and proactive monitoring tools with over 90,000 policyholders, Coalition insures against incidents like cyberattacks, email scams and accidental privacy violations. Jeff Kauflin, Forbes, 18 Feb. 2025 See All Example Sentences for accidental
Recent Examples of Synonyms for accidental
Adjective
  • The rationale is straightforward: like early-stage startups in the dot-com era, some of these assets may eventually prove valuable, whereas many others will likely become irrelevant.
    Christian Catalini, Forbes, 7 Mar. 2025
  • What’s practical for one person may be irrelevant for another.
    Chris Gallagher, USA TODAY, 6 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • From the high-profile trials of the 1990s to the celebrity court cases of today, the intersection of law and nostalgic fashion has captured public attention, turning legal battles into inadvertent marketing opportunities for brands and designers.
    Cassell Ferere, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2025
  • But classified information is compartmentalized within the government for a reason—to limit the number of people who can see it to those who really need to know and to keep the risk of inadvertent or malicious disclosure to a minimum.
    James Goldgeier, Foreign Affairs, 7 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • Maintain regular backups of your critical data on external drives or secure cloud services.
    Alex Vakulov, Forbes, 7 Mar. 2025
  • The initial findings from the autopsies found no external trauma on either of the bodies, Mendoza said.
    Alex Sundby, CBS News, 7 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • When Melonie Ambler prepares to treat a patient, her medical toolkit includes something unexpected: A cello.
    Elizabeth Cook, CBS News, 4 Mar. 2025
  • The wealthy use insurance, asset protection strategies, and estate planning to shield their money from unexpected events like market crashes, lawsuits, and economic downturns.
    Melissa Houston, Forbes, 4 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • The patchy and adventitious quality of Jameson’s reconstruction must make clear his difference as a thinker.
    Mark Greif, Harper's Magazine, 26 July 2024
  • The cut appears to have been high enough that the stump should still have enough adventitious buds to regrow.
    Jonathan Edwards, Washington Post, 3 Oct. 2023
Adjective
  • Every year in the US, there are approximately 35,000 ER visits due to unintentional medication overdoses among children under 5 years old.
    Katia Hetter, CNN, 1 Mar. 2025
  • Being aware of the potential for unintentional data leakage.
    Vinay Goel, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • And that is not something extrinsic, imposed by regulation or taxation, but inherent to the way the company conceives of itself, its ownership structure, its governance, its performance metrics, its finances — everything.
    IESE Business School, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Those sensors detect the subtle vibrations that are transmitted to the extrinsic laryngeal muscles (in the neck) from other anatomical locations including the velum, oropharynx, tongue, and epiglottis.
    Ben Coxworth, New Atlas, 21 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • How these characters define themselves ethnically is incidental to the violent, high-stakes crime world they’re thrust into.
    Hershal Pandya, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2025
  • A lot of character growth happens offscreen, and the romantic relationships feel arbitrary more than anything else — necessary on the page for marketing a TV show, but mostly incidental to what makes people want to watch this one in the first place.
    Proma Khosla, IndieWire, 6 Mar. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Accidental.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/accidental. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.

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