| 释义 |
incidental, a. (n.)|ɪnsɪˈdɛntəl|
[f. incident n. + -al1. Cf. mod.F. incidentel.]
A. adj.
1. a. Occurring or liable to occur in fortuitous or subordinate conjunction with something else of which it forms no essential part; casual.
1644Milton Educ. Wks. (1847) 98/1 Those incidental discourses which we have wandered into. 1697W. Dampier Voy. I. 161 With an incidental Account of the first Inducements that made the Privateers undertake the passage. 1736Butler Anal. ii. Concl. 405 In Scripture, whether in incidental passages or in the general scheme of it. 1790Paley Horæ Paul. Rom. ii. 19 A circumstance as incidental, and as unlike design, as any that can be imagined. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 17 The simple and apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced. 1876E. Mellor Priesth. viii. 371 There is scarcely any practice which is so corrupt as not to produce some incidental good.
b. Of a charge or expense: Such as is incurred (in the execution of some plan or purpose) apart from the primary disbursements.
1739Cibber Apol. (1756) II. 86 In the first six days of acting it, we paid all our constant and incidental expence, and shar'd each of us a hundred pounds. 1772Ann. Reg. 224 For defraying the expences of the civil establishment of his Majesty's colony of West Florida, and other incidental expences attending the same. 1804W. Tennant Ind. Recreat. (ed. 2) I. 63 The house rent, and the incidental charges of a family. 1868Peard Water-Farm. x. 104 These calls sufficed..for the nursery, and incidental expenses.
c. incidental images, incidental colours: such as are perceived by the eye as a consequence of visual impressions no longer present.
1876Bernstein Five Senses 117 These prolonged impressions of light are called incidental images. Ibid. 120 The incidental colours..which are formed in the eye, are most interesting.
2. incidental to: liable to happen to; to which a thing is liable or exposed. incidental upon: following upon as an incident.
1616Coryat in J. Taylor (Water P.) Wks. (1630) ii. 83 If I should happen to be destitute; a matter very incidentall to a poore Footman Pilgrim. 1665T. Mall Offer F. Help 96 Those temptations that are incidental to a suffering state. 1732Berkeley Alciphr. i. §10, I, who am no great genius, have a weakness incidental to little ones. 1828Scott F.M. Perth vi, The hesitation incidental to the use of a foreign language. 1851H. Spencer Social Statics 70 Others..may contend that..with the rightly constituted or moral man, correct conduct to others is merely incidental upon the fulfilment of his own nature. 1888J. Inglis Tent Life Tigerland 148 The dangers incidental to pigsticking.
3. a. Casually met with or encountered. rare.
1856J. Cumming Script. Read. Deuteron. viii. 143 The green moss and incidental flowerets break out from the rifts and rents. 1871Blackie Four Phases i. 122 The..braying of an incidental ass. 1876Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. v. xxxviii, A store of magical articulation with which he..promised himself to frighten any incidental Christian of his own years.
b. Given to relating casual incidents. nonce-use.
1843Carlyle Past & Pr. ii. v, Says the incidental Jocelin.
†4. = incident a.1 7. Obs. rare.
1813T. Busby Lucretius iv. Comment. xv, The angle contained by the incidental ray.
5. Special collocations: incidental advertisement (see quot.); incidental music, music played as an accompaniment or ‘background’ to a play or film, or to a radio or other performance or entertainment; incidental number, a piece of incidental music; also transf.
1931Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Aug. 636/3 ‘Incidental’ advertisements, advertisements..which are printed in a separate gathering from the body of the book and sewn in at either the end or the beginnning.
1864in H. J. Byron Orpheus & Eurydice 2 (heading) The incidental music selected and arranged by Mr. Frank Musgrave. 1928Melody Maker Feb. 214 (Advt.), Liber's incidental music. 1938Oxf. Compan. Music 464/1 Incidental music to plays has always been an important side-line of the art and business of the composer.
1904W. D. Adams Dict. Drama I. p. vi, Musical Composers, the latter ranging from the writers of operas and operettas to the providers of ‘incidental numbers’ for plays. 1912E. Wylie (title) Incidental numbers.
B. n. An incidental circumstance, event, charge, expense, etc.
1707Modest Enquiry in Sewall's Diary (1879) II. 73 The accidental occasions of hiring Transport Ships, together with the other Incidentals that must necessarily accrue. 1726Pope Let. to Bethel 9 Aug., Almost every body and every thing is a cause or object for humanity, even prosperity itself, and health itself; so many weak pitiful incidentals attend on them. 1866Rogers Agric. & Prices I. xxviii. 673 We should find in others a large bill for incidentals. |