English Explanatory Dictionary

adventitious

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. From an external source; not innate or inherent, foreign.
  2. Accidental, additional, appearing casually.
  3. Not congenital; acquired.
  4. Developing in an unusual place or from an unusual source.

Pronunciation

/ˌæd.vənˈtɪʃ.əs/ /ˌæd.vɛnˈtɪʃ.əs/ En-us-ncalif-adventitious.ogg LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-adventitious.wav

Word forms

adventitious more adventitious most adventitious adventicious

Etymology

From Medieval Latin adventītius (“coming from abroad, extraneous”), a corruption of Latin adventīcius (“foreign, strange, accidental”), from adventus (“arrival, coming, approach, advent”) + -īcius (suffix forming adjectives), from adveniō (“to arrive”) + -tus (suffix forming action nouns).

Synonyms

extrinsic exogenous accidental spontaneous sporadic incidental coincidental fortuitous serendipitous accidentary adventitious by accident by the by casual causeless chanceable lippening occasional random unforeseen unintended unintentional unplanned acquired

Related words

adventitial adventition adventive adventively

Derived words

adventitiously adventitiousness nonadventitious unadventitious
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on A Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary