incidentally
Americanadverb
-
apart or aside from the main subject of attention, discussion, etc.; by the way; parenthetically.
Incidentally, while you were waiting for the officer to run your registration through the system, did you notice if the post office was open?
-
in the course of something else, and not intentionally.
The bone fractures were discovered only incidentally, during an unrelated CT scan of her chest.
adverb
-
as a subordinate or chance occurrence
-
(sentence modifier) by the way
Etymology
Origin of incidentally
First recorded in 1655–65; incidental + -ly
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He has disowned his previous Merkelism; as prime minister, he now champions Canada’s emergence as an “energy superpower” helping to restabilize the world and, not incidentally, Canada’s internal politics.
Over the following decades Wiseman entered high schools, hospitals, army training camps, meat factories and public libraries to explore America's institutions, incidentally producing rich studies of human behavior.
From Barron's
But I also hear, incidentally, that the vetting process was "rushed" and "slapdash."
From BBC
And, almost incidentally, this was in February 2011 - putting more holes in Andrew's assurances that he'd cut off any contact with Epstein the previous year.
From BBC
The tag was also, incidentally, a play on “The Blue Dahlia,” a 1946 movie written by Raymond Chandler and starring Veronica Lake as a plucky drifter who helps the hero track down his wife’s murderer.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
