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Sudden vs Accidental - What's the difference?

sudden | accidental |

As adjectives the difference between sudden and accidental

is that sudden is happening quickly and with little or no warning while accidental is not essential; incidental, secondary.

As nouns the difference between sudden and accidental

is that sudden is an unexpected occurrence; a surprise while accidental is a property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.

As an adverb sudden

is suddenly.

sudden

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Happening quickly and with little or no warning.
  • *, chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}
  • (obsolete) Hastily prepared or employed; quick; rapid.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Never was such a sudden scholar made.
  • * Milton
  • the apples of Asphaltis, appearing goodly to the sudden eye
  • (obsolete) Hasty; violent; rash; precipitate.
  • * Shakespeare
  • I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden

    Antonyms

    * gradual * unsudden

    Derived terms

    * all of a sudden * sudden death * suddenly * suddenness * suddenwoven

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • (poetic) Suddenly.
  • * Milton
  • Herbs of every leaf that sudden flowered.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) An unexpected occurrence; a surprise.
  • Derived terms

    * all of a sudden * all of the sudden * of a sudden

    Statistics

    *

    accidental

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Not essential; incidental, secondary.
  • (music) Adjusted by one or two semitones, in temporary departure from the key signature.
  • Occurring sometimes, by chance; occasional.
  • Happening by chance, or unexpectedly; taking place not according to the usual course of things; by accident, unintentional.
  • *1603 , (John Florio), translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays , III.1:
  • *:The way to trueth is but one and simple, that of particular profit and benefit of affaires a man hath in charge, double, uneven and accidentall .
  • (geometry) Being a double point with two distinct tangent planes in 4-dimensional projective space.
  • Synonyms

    * adventitious, casual, contingent, fortuitous, incidental, occasional, serendipitous

    Derived terms

    * accidental chords * accidental colors * accidental point * accidental lights

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A property which is not essential; a nonessential; anything happening accidentally.
  • * Fuller — He conceived it just that accidentals ... should sink with the substance of the accusation.
  • (painting, pluralonly) Those fortuitous effects produced by luminous rays falling on certain objects so that some parts stand forth in abnormal brightness and other parts are cast into a deep shadow.
  • (music) A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.