Relating to or of the nature of an accident; happening by chance rather than design.
Medieval Latin 'accidentialis' from 'accidens' (accident). This philosophical term emerged in scholastic theology to distinguish between essential and accidental properties of things.
Medieval philosophers used this word to ask: is color essential to an apple, or merely accidental? This word captures the medieval obsession with sorting what things *must* have from what they just *happen* to have.
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