Word.ws English Dictionary

by accident

by accident adverb: accidentally; unintentionally; without meaning to; as the result of an event not expected, aided, or willingly planned.

Adverb

by accident (comparative more by accident, superlative most by accident)

  1. Accidentally; unintentionally; without meaning to; as the result of an event not expected, aided, or willingly planned.
    • Sorry. I knocked over the vase by accident.
  2. As the result of some undesigned, unintended, unrelated, natural, or random occurrence; as the unexpected and unforeseen result of formerly unrelated factors.
    • The car got totaled by accident; a giant snowdrift fell off the church roof.
    • The only way that project still exists today is by accident; I thought we closed it years ago.
  3. By chance; unexpectedly; as the result of an unrelated series of events.
    • I hadn't seen her for years, but I ran into her by accident at the store.
    • She overheard the information by accident.

Adjective

by accident (comparative more by accident, superlative most by accident)

  1. Accidental; as the result of some unforeseen happening or series of events; unexpected; resulting from an event without the foresight, expectation, aid, or design of the person by whose agency it was caused; unintentional.
    • The victim's death was by accident.
    • That the injury was by accident is not questioned.

by accident meaning in Tamil and Urdu

by accident in Tamil

எதிர்பாராமல், தற்செயலாக

by accident in Urdu

اتفاقاً

Examples of by accident in a sentence

  • The scholar thinks the quote and the parable were spoken on different occasions and only by accident were brought together here.
  • Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident: It is the very place God meant for thee.a. 1886, Richard Chenevix Trench, Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident:

Synonyms of by accident

Forms of by accident

Adverb
comparativemore by accident
superlativemost by accident
Adjective
comparativemore by accident
superlativemost by accident

Questions about by accident

What does by accident mean?
By accident means accidentally; unintentionally; without meaning to; as the result of an event not expected, aided, or willingly planned.
What is by accident in Tamil?
By accident in Tamil is எதிர்பாராமல், தற்செயலாக. See By accident meaning in Tamil.
How do you use by accident in a sentence?
The scholar thinks the quote and the parable were spoken on different occasions and only by accident were brought together here.
What part of speech is by accident?
By accident can be an adverb or an adjective.

Words near by accident in the dictionary

  1. by a nose length
  2. by a time
  3. by a whisker
  4. by a whisper
  5. by a wide margin
  6. by accident
  7. by all accounts
  8. by all appearances
  9. by all means
  10. by all reports
  11. by Allah

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by accident (page history and authors); by accident (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); by accident (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “by accident.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_accident. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.