ADVENTITIOUS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does adventitious mean? 

• ADVENTITIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective ADVENTITIOUS has 1 sense:

1. associated by chance and not an integral part

  Familiarity information: ADVENTITIOUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ADVENTITIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Associated by chance and not an integral part

Context example:

they had to decide whether his misconduct was adventitious or the result of a flaw in his character

Similar:

extrinsic (not forming an essential part of a thing or arising or originating from the outside)

 Context examples 

But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I am sure most people would have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of complete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression mad man as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)