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Incidental   /ˌɪnsɪdˈɛntəl/   Listen
Incidental

noun
1.
(frequently plural) an expense not budgeted or not specified.  Synonyms: incidental expense, minor expense.
2.
An item that is incidental.



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"Incidental" Quotes from Famous Books



... reduce the annoyance of preparing oxygen, the use of the usual thin copper conical bottle should be avoided. The makers of steel gas bottles provide retorts of wrought iron or steel for oxygen-making, and these do very well. They have the incidental advantage of being strong enough to resist the attacks of a servant when a ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... process, to have struck any one that this rich phosphatic bye-product might prove a valuable addition to our artificial fertilisers. The result was, that the Thomas-slag was treated as another of the only too numerous valueless bye-products which seem to be necessarily incidental to most of our chemical and other manufactures, and was allowed to accumulate in large quantities without being ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... fighting space they hung, body to body, in a whirling melee. Neither had much skill in real boxing, and such fashion of fight was unknown in that region, the offensive being the main thing and defense remaining incidental. The thud of fist on face, the discoloration that rose under the savage blows, the blood that oozed and scattered, proved that the fighting blood of both these mad creatures was up, so that they felt no pain, even ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... Incidental to intellectual culture in college is the ability to find promptly the information we want. "Next to knowing a thing," says Dr. Johnson, "is to know where to find it." No student can become a walking encyclopaedia, but he should learn while in college how to avail himself advantageously of ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... the head-stone of Wordsworth's grave, and plucks it away with his own hands, reflecting that it may have drawn its nourishment from his mortal remains. We may suppose that he preserved this grass, and it is only from such incidental circumstances that we discover who were Hawthorne's favorites among poets and other distinguished writers. He twice ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... believe we have a more trustworthy historian than Dr. Hale, so far as giving us the motive and pith and essence of great transactions. He is sometimes criticised for inaccuracy in dates or matters that are trifling or incidental. I suppose that comes from the fact that while he stores away in his mind everything that is essential, and trusts to his memory for that, he has not the time, which less busy men have, to verify every unsubstantial ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... and which are allowed to accumulate in the soil from the period at which the active growth of, and consequently assimilation of nitrates by, the cereal crop have ceased, are thus fixed in the organic matter of the plant, and removed from danger of loss by drainage incidental to autumn rains. ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... no kindness to encourage men to enter a ministry whose inexorable requirements and whose incidental possibilities they may not look in the face. It is no kindness to represent to them that the qualities which they possess ought to engage attention; and that their talents will command respect, or else it will be the fault ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... hill, and a beacon to all the country round. A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might blow down some time or other, and exterminate himself and any incidental relatives who might be "stopping" or "tarrying" with him,—also laboring under the delusion that human life is under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable existence,—had the great poplar cut down. It is so easy to say, "It is only a poplar!" and so much harder to replace its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... to be said. This is not a biography but a bundle of correspondence, and I have only to state that Mrs. Nicholls died of an illness incidental to childbirth on March 31st 1855, and was buried in the Bronte tomb in Haworth church. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... great acroterium of the Heraion, for example, the surface was first covered with a dark varnish-like coating on which the drawing was incised down to the original clay. Then the outlines were filled in black, red and white. Here the bearing becomes clear of an incidental remark of Pausanias in his description of Olympia. He says (v. 10.): [Greek: en de Olympia] (of the Zeus temple) [Greek: lebes epichrysos epi ecast tou orophou t perati epikeitai]. That is originally aeroteria were only vases set up ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... interpreted, is further subdivided in vv. 25, 26 (a passage almost unintelligible in the Authorized Version) into three periods, viz. seven weeks (forty-nine years), sixty-two weeks, and one week (seven years). [Footnote 1: Another incidental proof that the book is late. In the time presupposed by it for the activity of Daniel, the seventy years had not yet expired, and so there could have ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... any motion or resolution, incidental to any such motion or resolution as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or incidental to any such vote or appropriation ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... wonder that a Christian soul could preserve within itself an image so ignorantly fair, in such an age, when the worldliness and corruption in the Papal chair were obtruded by a thousand incidental manifestations, and were alluded to in all the calculations of simple common people, who looked at facts with a mere view to the guidance of their daily conduct, it is necessary to remember the nature of Agnes's religious training, and the absolute renunciation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... simultaneous transmission incidental to an exempt transmission, such as a feed received by and then retransmitted by an exempt transmitter: *Provided*, That such incidental transmissions do not include any subscription transmission directly for reception by members ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... the king can never be a joint-tenant; and that his debt shall be preferred before a debt to any of his subjects. These, and an infinite number of other instances, will better be understood, when we come regularly to consider the rules themselves, to which these incidental prerogatives are exceptions. And therefore we will at present only dwell upon the king's substantive ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... possessions, he found some imperfect assuagement of those bitter feelings of suppressed scorn and resentment, which a sense of lost station and slighted importance engendered. Mr. Marston's early habits had, unhappily, been of a kind to aggravate, rather than alleviate, the annoyances incidental to reduced means. He had been a gay man, a voluptuary, and a gambler. His vicious tastes had survived the means of their gratification. His love for his wife had been nothing more than one of those vehement and headstrong fancies, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Isthmian Congress the war is described as the most important one then being waged in Greece (Herod. vii. 145). (iii.) It is improbable that Athens would have sent twenty vessels to the aid of the Ionians in 498 B.C. if at the time she was at war with Aegina. (iv.) There is an incidental indication of time, which points to the period after Marathon as the true date for the events which are referred by Herodotus to the year before Marathon, viz. the thirty years that were to elapse between the dedication of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... pounds, I suppose. Then there would be her clothing, and pocket-money, and incidental expenses—altogether a hundred pounds, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... sorrows harass me; nor do I feel that I am in any way different from what I am wont to be. Perhaps some troubles I may have, but they are such as are incidental ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... fill up the vacancy by borrowing the remarks in vogue. These are the winds and currents we have all to steer amongst, and they are often too strong for our truthfulness or our wit. Let us not bear too hardly on each other for this common incidental frailty, or think that we rise superior to it by dropping all ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... God for that!" murmurs the colonel, realising that the one company of his battalion will be spared the arduous duty of trying to replace cavalry, and that the other three will be in the first of the fray and consequently the first out of ammunition and free from the danger always incidental to the use of blank ammunition at close ranges. Moreover, advanced guards have always been his hobby, so he proceeds to issue his orders—verbally of course, though he will write them out later for the sake of curious generals who make collections of such things. While he is waiting ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... had quite a reawakening jog from an incidental abrasure, received by coming in contact with one of the acute angles in the person of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who honored us with her distinguished presence. She was in company with the family of the Honorable Mr. Sargent, United ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... Man," Edition I., Volume I., pages 386-401, where Dr. Wallace's observations are quoted.), of Colchester, about the proportional numbers of the two sexes in Bombyx; and in this note, apropos to an incidental remark of mine, he stoutly maintains that female lepidoptera never notice the colours or appearance of the male, but always receive the first male which comes; and this appears very probable. He says he has ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... that fraud, misrepresentation, and actual violence are the constituent elements of the immigration system, even as it is now conducted, and that no vigilance on the part of the government which superintends its prosecution can prevent the abuses incidental to it. . . . . In China, especially, this is notoriously the case, and I refer you to Sir John Bowring's despatches on Immigration from China, for the fullest revelations. I need only add, that he designates the Chinese coolie traffic as ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... that the erection of the dermal appendages is a reflex action, independent of the will; and this action must be looked at, when, occurring under the influence of anger or fear, not as a power acquired for the sake of some advantage, but as an incidental result, at least to a large extent, of the sensorium being affected. The result, in as far as it is incidental, may be compared with the profuse sweating from an agony of pain or terror. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how slight an excitement often suffices to cause the hair to ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... perhaps bitterly. "Doesn't your figure of speech carry you too far? In our case the judge and the court were only incidental. What really ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... no residue on evaporation at 212 deg. F. On distillation, four-fifths by volume of the quantity taken must distil over at a temperature not exceeding 138 deg. F. The residual matter left after this distillation must not contain, besides acetone, any ingredient that is not a bye-product incidental to the manufacture ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... for itself—entirely agreeable. Almost everything that I have written has been written from necessity; and there is very little of it that I shall not be glad to see forgotten. The true rewards of literature, for men of limited calibre, are the incidental ones,—the valuable friendships and the charming associations which it brings about. For the sake of these I would willingly endure again many passages of a life that has not been all roses; not that I would appear to belittle my own work: it does not need it. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... event of Japanese and Chinese desiring jointly to undertake agricultural enterprises and industries incidental thereto, the Chinese ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... industrial activities—none of these things is more than incidental in the national task of woman. Her great task is to prepare the citizen. The citizen is not prepared by a training in practical politics. Something more fundamental is required. The meaning of honor and of the sanctity of one's word, the understanding ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... these islands it is impossible to determine. There is evidence, however, that the practice was not only in vogue, but firmly established as an adjunct of power, as early as the days of the Saxon kings. It was, in fact, coeval with feudalism, of which it may be described as a side-issue incidental to a maritime situation; for though it is impossible to point to any species of fee, as understood of the tenure of land, under which the holder was liable to render service at sea, yet it must not be forgotten that the great ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... Repair.—The process of repair by primary union, above described, is to be looked upon as the type of all reparative processes, such modifications as are met with depending merely upon incidental differences in the conditions present, such as loss of tissue, infection by ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... incidental faults of opinion or temper in adherents of the Movement, led on to a discussion of the secondary causes, by means of which a system of doctrine may be embraced, modified, or developed, of the variety ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... 15% and damaging the DNA of some fish; illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in recent years, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, which is likely to affect the sustainability of the stock; large amount of incidental mortality of seabirds resulting from long-line ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental. It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard by practices injurious to the general welfare. One's worst enemies were necessarily those of his own trade, for, under your plan of making private profit the motive of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... Are we self-poised, or does our balance depend on something external? According to the actual belief in which our answer to these questions is embodied so will our lives be. In everything there are two parts, the essential and the incidental—that which is the nucleus and raison d'etre of the whole thing, and that which gathers round this nucleus and takes form from it. The true knowledge always consists in distinguishing these two from each other, and error always ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... a way, of course, that is quite true, Mr Quiverful; and when we know how very inadequate are the incomes of the working clergy, we cannot but feel ourselves to be, if I may so say, put upon, when we have to defray the expenses incidental to special duties out of our own pockets. I think, you know,—I don't mind saying this to you,—that the palace should have provided us with a chaise and pair." This was ungrateful on the part of Mr Thumble, who had been permitted to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... dog—a white Havana spaniel—was brought home and renamed, after an incidental character in "Nicholas Nickleby," "Mr. Snittle Timbery." This was shortened to "Timber," and under that name the little dog lived to be very old, and accompanied the family in all its migrations, including the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... of Byng, as of Mathews, we are not concerned with the general considerations of the campaign to which the battle was incidental. It is sufficient to note that in Minorca, then a British possession, the French had landed an army of 15,000 men, with siege artillery sufficient to reduce the principal port and fortress, Port Mahon; upon which the whole island must fall. Their communications with ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... it essential to devote a separate chapter to the judicial authorities of the United States, lest their great political importance should be lessened in the reader's eyes by a merely incidental mention of them. Confederations have existed in other countries beside America; and republics have not been established on the shores of the New World alone: the representative system of government has been adopted in several states of Europe; but I am not aware that ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... a very quiet life. I ought to go to some quiet place away from people, with someone with me whom I care for and who cares for me. That was the gist of his prescription. Of course I have a special dietary and medicine to take, but that's only incidental!" ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... in many cities of the States a man is thought to live well within bounds if he so expends a fourth. There can be no doubt as to Americans living in better houses than Englishmen, making the comparison of course between men of equal incomes. But the Englishman has many more incidental expenses than the American. He spends more on wine, on entertainments, on horses, and on amusements. He has a more numerous establishment, and keeps up the adjuncts and outskirts of his residence with ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... personal reminiscences of Virginia before the war. It is a charming story, without motive other than the pleasure of recalling happy memories, and it describes a society of various and vivid charm. The mention of the slaves is occasional and incidental; but the description of the plantation hands, and especially the household servants, trusted and beloved, gives a sunny and doubtless a real side of slavery. Another book is fuller and more impressive in its treatment. It might be said ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... to the large islands of Crete and Euboea, and the shores of Attica and the Peloponnese. It is impossible to trace with any exactness the order in which the Phoenician colonies were founded. A thousand incidental circumstances—a thousand caprices—may have deranged what may be called the natural or geographical order, and have caused the historical order to diverge from it; but, on the whole, probably something like ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... enjoins upon his readers the wickedness of drinking more than sixty cocktails a day, and utterly deprecates the habit of certain Englishmen of drinking seven bottles of port at a sitting. Bacchus seemed to think that, with the other wines incidental to a dinner, no one, not even an Englishman, should attempt to absorb more than five bottles of port over his coffee. It struck me as ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... Other incidental results follow from the equality of the sexes. The early marriages which are the curse of India do not prevail among the Nairs. Consequently the schooling of girls is continued later. And this State holds the record in all India for female education. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... feel better,—more alive. She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights. Her promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and father, did they know the true circumstances,—that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was perhaps in love with her—would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would have believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that matters could not go on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, we are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is Samuel Johnson is so familiar, and has ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... came Eastward a letter from a proud young matron,—still young despite the cares incidental to the possession of a lively brood, among whom there seems no higher ambition than to emulate the exploits of a certain Master Sandy Ray, who is in pristine knickerbockers and perennial mischief. "Jack says," writes this proud mamma, "that with all his pranks that blessed little rascal ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... color put him in a class by himself among great orators, and although his slave past threw around him an element of romance that added charm to his eloquence, these were mere incidental elements of distinction. The North was full of fugitive slaves, and more than one had passionately proclaimed his wrongs. There were several colored orators who stood high in the councils of the abolitionists and did good service ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... thought in his mind that held him doubtful for a moment. His craft was cautious of its kind, and his manner was quite incidental as he said, "And the others ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... transept-arches to a point, to accommodate them to the oblong plan, and bring the upper mouldings into line with those of the rounded arches between the choir and nave. On this supposition the result has been called "an incidental use of the pointed arch," examples of which occur elsewhere (e.g., at Christ Church, Oxford, and other churches of the transitional period) before it became a distinguishing feature of the later style. It is tolerably certain, however, that the tower was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and that ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is supreme—if not unique—as a painter of the universal scourge of prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange allure, aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for femininity—even though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... of which news had been received by wireless, I kept asking myself,—"What does it really mean to us? To vast, rich, young America?" Surely not merely more money, more power, even a loftier inspiration for the few who have given themselves generously in sympathy and aid. After all, these were but incidental. The threat we were beginning to feel to our own security, this campaign for "preparedness," did not seem of prime, moving importance. Probably in our bewildered state of mind we should wrangle politically about the matter of how much defense we needed, then drop some more ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... pace, a little moved by the speciousness of the pleading. The incidental reference to that one grief of his brother's life was of a kind which could never fail to arouse generous sympathy in his heart. But Mr. Landale had not come to the critical point of his say, and he did not choose to allow the chapter of emotion ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... essayist and who had lived among our essayists, fancied that "mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically;" and so athirst was that first of our great moral biographers for the details of human life and the incidental characteristics of individuals, that he was desirous of obtaining anecdotes without preparation or connexion. "If a man," said this lover of literary anecdotes, "is to wait till he weaves anecdotes, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... confederation, but bad logic for a nation, to say that the articles of its organic law may not be changed by the will of the people. And let us not neglect to observe in the provisions of article fifth the strong incidental proof that the Constitution of the United States was meant to be the basis of a nation, and not the compact of a confederation. For how may this article be reconciled with the theory of a compact? Three fourths of the States may concur in adopting an amendment that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of the railway; charges for the use of carriages, wagons, and locomotive power, and total maximum charges which were less than the sum of the several charges. In the Acts no mention was made of terminals, though in some of them power to make a charge for services incidental to conveyance was authorised, and what these words really meant was the subject of much legal argument ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... say, basalt for my slab, sons?: Note how all things else, even such reflections as are expressed in the two preceding verses, are incidental with the Bishop; his poor, art-besotted mind turns abruptly to the black basalt which he craves for the slab of his tomb; and see vv. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... work in Kansas, which letter was written by Bro. S. A. Marshall, of Leavenworth—both an M. D. and a preacher, and than whom no more honorable gentleman ever lived in that city. His testimony is incidental, and therefore ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... whom you desire to oblige; thirdly, a conformity of expense to that of the company which you keep; as in public spectacles; your share of little entertainments; a few pistoles at games of mere commerce; and other incidental calls of good company. The only two articles which I will never supply, are the profusion of low riot, and the idle lavishness of negligence and laziness. A fool squanders away, without credit or advantage to himself, more than a man of sense spends with both. The ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... up," comforted Emma Dean. "I've seen worse days than this suddenly brace up and smile. Let's possess our souls in patience. Incidental to the process we might restore the shattered faith of some of our deluded correspondents. During the past six days it has pained me to observe the postman arrive, full-handed, to turn away, alas, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... have written "directions" for the masters of his day, as by incidental allusions he makes, we find they were not unaccustomed to ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... seemed as essential to his comfort as rest is to less determined natures. He was a thorough believer in the moral necessity of absolute allegiance to his sphere; and differed from his brother-artists chiefly in the decisive manner in which he kept aloof from extrinsic and incidental influences. If Art ever made labor delectable, it was so with him. He seemed to go through with the ordinary processes of life with but a half consciousness thereof,—save where his personal affections were concerned. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... This incidental mention of Mrs. Foster had sent my thoughts and fears fluttering toward a deep, unutterable dread, which was lurking under all my other cares. Should I be driven by the mere stress of utter poverty to return ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... Domesday are the most speaking witness to the spirit of outward legality which ruled every act of William. In this way they are wonderfully instructive; but from the formulae alone no one could ever make the real facts of William's coming and reign. It is the incidental notices which make us more at home in the local and personal life of this reign than of any reign before or for a long time after. The Commissioners had to report whether the King's will had been everywhere carried out, whether every man, great and small, French and English, had what the ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... are so little understood by the great majority of men, both trained and untrained, that it is practically ignored not only in the conduct of life, but of education. It receives some incidental development as a result of educational processes, but the effort to reach and affect it as the faculties of observation, of reasoning, and of memory are made specific objects of training and unfolding, is rarely made. It ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... afterwards he took up the subject of 'Magnetic Rotations,' and on the morning of Christmas-day, 1821, he called his wife to witness, for the first time, the revolution of a magnetic needle round an electric current. Incidental to the 'historic sketch,' he repeated almost all the experiments there referred to; and these, added to his own subsequent work, made him practical master of all that was then known regarding the ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... of the partners in the house of Macmillans, and the husband of John Halifax, Gentlewoman. This book Mrs. Craik sent to Mark Lemon, who invited the young graduate to the Punch office, and adopting the grotesque illustrations to "Mazeppa" at once, gave him a sort of running commission to do incidental work, to which Mr. Riviere gladly responded by a total of the twenty-three cuts—chiefly of wild animal subjects—contributed by him through 1868 and 1869. Not only was the work congenial, but the artist at the time was entirely dependent upon illustration ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... "Oh, how he stank!" I answer that this is the odor of sanctity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I have to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that there are definite physiological phenomena incidental to the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... friends as if we thought they came as beggars for physical food. It is a much higher compliment to treat them as though we thought they came to exchange thoughts with us, to walk with us in the higher paths of living, and that the physical food we give them is only incidental. I was once entertained where a company of intelligent, cultured people were assembled, and we did not see the hostess from the time we entered the house until supper was served. She sat at the table, worried and anxious, and after the supper ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... brief reign (964-972) displayed all these qualities. He defeated the Khazarui, the most civilized of all those Oriental people, and once the most powerful. He subjugated the Pechenegs, perhaps the most brutal and least civilized of all the barbarians. But these were only incidental to his ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... into his face, dark hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet the general character of his countenance was pleasant and agreeable. The service commenced with a hymn, to which succeeded an extemporary prayer. It had the fault of frequent repetition, incidental to all such prayers; but it was plain and comprehensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sympathy and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of this form of address to the Deity as it might be. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... traverses is narrower as regards space, but its spirit is large and generous, and its subject-matter is of the loftiest significance. If the writer does not indulge us with many disquisitions, it is not from lack of ability. Wherever, as in his moralizings upon King Philip's War, and in his incidental comments upon the peculiarities and temper of his prominent men, he allows us to meet his own mind, he is uniformly wise and interesting. He stands by Rhode Island as does Dr. Palfrey by Massachusetts; and seeing that for a far longer period than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... any other occupation. None of the reputable occupations are homogeneous from the standpoint of the natural dispositions of the men and women who compose them, and the same is true of the disreputable occupations. Many women of fine natural character and disposition are drawn in a momentary and incidental way into an irregular life, and recover, settle down to regular modes of living, drift farther, are married, and make uncommonly good wives. In this respect the adventuress is more fortunate than the criminal (that other great adventitious product), because ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... all comes back, doubtless, this vision of missed occasions and delays overdone, to the general truth that the observer, the enjoyer, may, before he knows it, be practically too far in for all that free testimony and pleasant, easy talk that are incidental to the earlier or more detached stages of a relation. There are relations that soon get beyond all merely showy appearances of value for us. Their value becomes thus private and practical, and is represented by the process—the quieter, mostly, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... out. Charles, the first of us to graduate, became the college bell-ringer, to pay his fees, but Jacob and myself were in turn excused, even from this service. My father's practical opposition, the refusal to pay the incidental expenses for what he always persisted in regarding as a useless education, was met, in Charles's case, by my mother's taking in the students' washing, to provide them. In the cases of Jacob and myself, this drudgery was exchanged for that of a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... was to be told about my own uneventful life she knew before many days were passed, but of her own past she never spoke. From incidental remarks we found that she had been the godchild of a well-known politician long since dead, and that at eighteen she had been presented at Court, which two discoveries proved useful, as they were enough to convince the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... arrows tested, five consistently made a good close group and four as consistently went out. The "outs," however, were uniform in the direction and distance they took. It would be possible by this machine to select arrows that would make co-incidental patterns. It is obvious, however, that differences in individual arrows are greatly exaggerated by the apparatus, because it was quite apparent by this test that any good archer could group these hits much closer than ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... Measurement. Definitions. Abscissa. Angle. Apothegm. Apsides or Apsis. Chord. Cycloid. Conoid. Conic Section. Ellipsoid. Epicycloid. Evolute. Flying Buttress. Focus. Gnomes. Hexagon. Hyperbola. Hypothenuse. Incidental. Isosceles. Triangle. Parabola. Parallelogram. Pelecoid. Polygons. Pyramid. Rhomb. Sector. ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... meng, or Dream of the South Branch (as the title, literally translated, should read), is the work of a writer named Li Kung-tso, who, from an incidental mention of his own experiences in Kiangsi which appears in another of his tales, is ascertained to have lived at the beginning of the ninth century of our era. The nan k'o, or South Branch, is the portion of a huai tree (Sophora Japdonica, a tree well ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... in the murmur of the dialogues wherein were mingled foreign politics, exhibitions of paintings, fashionable scandals, and Academy speeches. They talked of the new novel and of the coming play. This was a comedy. Napoleon was an incidental character in it. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... different passages of his Organon, Aristotle calls the epic a cycle and the poetry of Homer a cycle. Now both passages are employed by him to illustrate a defective syllogism, hence are purely incidental. But no instance could better show the prevalence of the idea of a cycle as applied to Homer and epic poetry, for the philosopher evidently draws his illustration from something familiar to everybody. It had become a Greek common-place 350 B.C., and probably long before, that ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... military hierarchy these interests of the sensuous creature have their sure conductor into the heart of the Commander. He himself, through mental and bodily fatigue, is more or less weakened in his natural activity, and thus it happens then that, mostly from these causes, purely incidental to human nature, less is done than might have been done, and that generally what is done is to be ascribed entirely to the THIRST FOR GLORY, the energy, indeed also the HARD-HEARTEDNESS of the General-in-Chief. It is only thus we can explain the hesitating manner ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... domestication, this intercrossing may be prevented; and in this prevention lies the art of producing varieties. But "the art itself is Nature," since the whole art consists in allowing the most universal of all natural tendencies in organic things (inheritance) to operate uncontrolled by other and obviously incidental tendencies. No new power, no artificial force, is brought into play either by separating the stock of a desirable variety so as to prevent mixture, or by selecting for breeders those individuals which most largely partake of the peculiarities for ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... we must have in due proportion and quantity in order to live. Neither the animal nor the vegetable kingdom furnishes the one to the exclusion of the other. We derive our supplies of each from both. More than this, we consume and appropriate certain incidental elements, which find their place and use in the healthy system. Iron floats in our blood, sulphur lies hidden in the hair and nails, phosphorus scintillates unseen in the brain, lime compacts our bones, and fluorine sets the enamelled edges of our teeth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... will do credit to themselves and sustain the high reputation which the Territorials have already won for themselves there. The health of the troops has been remarkably good, and their freedom from enteric fever and from the usual diseases incidental to field operations is a striking testimony to the value of inoculation and to the advice and skill of the Royal Army Medical Corps and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... is comparatively little used nowadays. The dash is preferred, probably because it disfigures the page less. The office of the parenthesis is to isolate a phrase which is merely incidental, and which might be omitted without detriment to the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... Constitution which has occurred since its adoption; and, however partisans may have disputed the clearness and precision of phraseology, we have often been called upon to enforce its limitations of legislative power; but the business of interpretation was incidental, and the difficulty was not in the diction, but in the uncertainty of the act to which it was to be applied. I have said a question on the meaning of a phrase has arisen a second time. It would be more ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... throwing out certain incidental questions, which, without being absolutely essential, would render the subject more complicated, and by making such concessions and assumptions as may be fairly supposed to be without ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... dogma. Hence we look in vain in his book for definite views on the constitution of existing substances, on the nature of motion, on the meaning of cause, and so on. We get a glimpse of his attitude to some of these questions in an incidental way. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... masterly treatise on "The Early History of Landholding among the Germans;" but as I am not yet quite clear as to how far this modification will go, and as it can in nowise affect the general drift of my argument, I have made no change in my incidental remarks on ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... More incidental to this history, however, it is to be narrated that Captain Cooper was one of those trading skippers who carried their own merchandise in their own vessels which they sailed themselves, and on whose decks they did their own bartering. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... is the sort of process which we are about to attempt. As a parallel to the king we select the worker in wool, and compare the art of weaving with the royal science, trying to separate either of them from the inferior classes to which they are akin. This has the incidental advantage, that weaving and the web furnish us with a figure of speech, which we can ...
— Statesman • Plato

... who partake of that rite. It converts what is primarily a memorial into a prophecy. It bids us hope as well as, and because we, remember. The light behind us is cast forward on to the dimness before. So the Apostle Paul, in his solitary reference to the Communion—which, indeed, is an entirely incidental one, and evoked simply by the corruptions in the Corinthian Church, emphasises this prophetic and onward-looking aspect of the backward-looking rite when he says, 'Ye do show the Lord's death ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Mr. Brown said: "Time was in Canada when the imposition of duty on any article was regarded as a misfortune, and the slightest addition to an existing duty was resented by the people. But increasing debt brought new burdens; the deceptive cry of 'incidental protection' got a footing in the land; and from that the step has been easy to the bold demand now set up by a few favoured industries, that all the rest of the community ought to be, and should rejoice to be, taxed seventeen and a half per cent, to ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... the Accident Insurance Law. Here the brunt of the payment falls wholly on the employer. He alone pays the premiums for all his work-people; the amount varies according to (1) the man's wage, (2) the risk incidental to the employment. The latter is determined by the actuaries of the Government. If a man is injured (even if it be by his own carelessness) he receives payments during the first thirteen weeks ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... Retirement at the Maisonnette.—I publish four incidental Essays on Political Affairs: 1. Of the Government of France since the Restoration, and of the Ministry in Office (1820); 2. Of Conspiracies and Political Justice (1821); 3. Of the Resources of the Government and the Opposition in the actual State of France (1821); ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... inexhaustible,—they stumbling on by themselves, or the blind leading the blind, with the same pathetic patience which they carry into everything. The chaplain is getting up a school-house, where he will soon teach them as regularly as he can. But the alphabet must always be a very incidental ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... who feel as I do, that life and love are of little worth if they must end in dark nothingness, these may perhaps have the patience to come with me through the pages of a narrative which is neither 'incidental' nor 'sensational' nor anything which should pertain to the modern 'romance' or 'novel,' and which has been written because the writing of it enforced itself upon me with an insistence that would take ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... globes; and, thirdly, perhaps of the costly apparatus required for such studies as Sideral astronomy, galvanic chemistry or physiology, &c.]; all these are uses which cannot be regarded in a higher light than as conveniences merely incidental and collateral to the main views of the founders. There are, then, two much loftier and more commanding ends met by the idea and constitution of such institutions, and which first rise to a rank of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... justifiable. Commerce is the handmaid of civilization, and if his coming was only incidentally right, yet that incident belongs to civilization, which is amenable to the moral code, and is also to be commended, with all its incidental, as well as more matured blessings. The institutions of civilization rescued these 4,000,000 of barbarians from the dangers, degradation, and miseries of barbarism, and by causing them to subserve civilization, compelled them to do right. The English and American false philanthropists, monarchical ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... of thought as well as of existence, in relation to the most important and most operative of all social facts, the possession of the soil. In England, inequality lies embedded in the very base of the social structure; in America it is a late, incidental, unrecognized product, not of tradition, but of industry and wealth, as they advance with various and, of necessity, unequal steps. Heredity, seated as an idea in the heart's core of Englishmen, and sustaining far more than ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... probable view that the male and female organs in two sets of individuals have been by some means specially adapted for reciprocal action; and that the sterility between the individuals of the same set or form is an incidental and purposeless result. The meaning of the term "incidental" may be illustrated by the greater or less difficulty in grafting or budding together two plants belonging to distinct species; for as this capacity is quite immaterial to the welfare of either, it cannot have been ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... God beholds Him, beholds His concealed glory, beholds His high destination; and because He beholds, He also takes care, and prepares His transition from lowliness to glory. But the "before Him" does not by any means here form the main thought; it only gives a gentle and incidental hint.—The root denotes here, as in chap. xi. 1, 10, the product of the root, that whereby it becomes visible, the sprout from the root. In reference to this parallel passage, Stier strikingly remarks: "It is, by our modern ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... campaign, and mockingly showed "The Great Warriors Dah-Bee and Cob-Den" vainly trying to overturn his Government. He made good sport of the Celestials, as a matter of course, but his mortification was extreme on learning that the incidental outlay would delay the hoped-for repeal of the paper duty. He found a small outlet for his feelings in the cartoon representing a Chinese mandarin as "The New Paper-weight" (p. 20, Vol. XXXIX.), but in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... of these incidental supplies could be known in England, it was fair to conclude, that our situation must have been adverted to, and that ships with provisions were now not very distant. Under this idea, although on the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... that period of the controversy. These two speeches are substituted for the Garfield-Blackburn discussion over a "rider" to an appropriation bill designed to forbid federal control of elections within the States. This discussion was only incidental to the problem of reconstruction, and may be said to have occurred at a time (1879) subsequent to the close ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... sir. It's Olga. She's got a pen, I can tell you. 'Madame de Pompadour. Hitherto we have had the pleasure of having Madame ——, whose pressure on the State and on Italy's wise counsellors was only incidental, but now that the fates have given us a Madame Pompadour....' Then there's a leading article on your speech in the piazza. Praises you up to the skies. Look! 'Thank God we have men like the Honourable Rossi, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... be in the boats-crew-watch of a heedless whaleman, the man who heads it is bound to maintain his post on the quarter-deck until regularly relieved. Yet drowsiness being incidental to all natures, even to Napoleon, beside his own sentry napping in the snowy bivouac; so, often, in snowy moonlight, or ebon eclipse, dozed Mark, our harpooneer. Lethe be his portion this blessed night, thought I, as during the morning ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... Phonography can not readily appreciate the ease with which it may be mastered, and the delight incidental to the unfolding of its principles. "Fascinating" is the word used in describing it by every one who has studied the art. The text-books have been so arranged and simplified that Self-instruction is a positive pleasure ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... danger arises from lack of mental perspective. It comes from presenting all the points of a lesson on the same plane of emphasis, with a failure to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Minor details and incidental aspects of the topic often receive the same degree of stress that is given to more important points. This results in a state of monotonous plodding through so much material without responding to its varying shades of meaning ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... assassinate a judge. Probably they merely wished to exercise the members of the force, and, in the absence of any actual crime in the country, felt that no harm could come to anyone through the 'shadowing' of Miss Goold. The plan, though the authorities probably did not consider this, had the incidental advantage of gratifying the lady herself. She was perfectly acquainted with most of the officers who were put on her track, and was always in good spirits when she recognised one of them waiting for her in Westland ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... a consideration of Barton's proposal. He was forced to admit that the old lawyer had an irritating knack of ignoring all incidental issues and stripping a problem to a statement of irrefutable fact. It was undeniable, for example, that what Don might desire in the way of salary did not affect the truth of Barton's contention that twelve hundred dollars was ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... obtained, when one was set aside and a new heap begun. Upon the completion of 10 heaps, a pebble was set aside to indicate 100; and so on until the entire army had been numbered. Another illustration, taken from the very antipodes of Madagascar, recently found its way into print in an incidental manner,[7] and is so good that it deserves a place beside de Flacourt's time-honoured example. Mom Cely, a Southern negro of unknown age, finds herself in debt to the storekeeper; and, unwilling to believe that the amount is as great as he represents, she proceeds to investigate the matter in ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... Robertson, "that the pendulous position of the flowers owes its origin to the fact that it renders them less convenient to other insects, but equally convenient to the higher bees which are the most efficient pollinators; and that the resulting protection to pollen and nectar is merely an incidental effect." Certain Lepidoptera, and small insects which crawl into the cylinder, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... already established five hydro-electric plants which furnish water, motive power, and light as may be required. From the big Roosevelt Dam and the drops of the level in the canal connected therewith, twenty-six thousand horse-power will be developed incidental to the reclamation of two hundred thousand ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... does allow himself to be dragged thither, why does he sulk, leaning against a chilly mantel-piece, eying his fragile coffee cup with disdain, and enacting the role of martyr generally, until he can persuade his wife to go home again? Why, indeed; but because he feels out of place. His rare and incidental appearance is a journey into a far country, of which he has little knowledge, and in which he has no interest. But when a man goes—ever so seldom—where he knows that his card habitually goes, he feels that he is on familiar ground, and he will go in person, of ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... assistance, the Bishop brought Mrs. Selwyn on shore, and left her there to assist Mr. Nobbs in preparing the entire population to be confirmed on his return. But the Pitcairners have been amply written about, and as Coleridge Patteson's connection with them was only incidental, I shall not dwell ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lay somewhat apart from the other ranch buildings, with a system of pens at its back, with chutes and swinging wickets for "cutting out" lambs from their mothers destined for the shears, and other incidental purposes. The shed was a roof of bearded mesquite-grass, stayed by boughs and supported on live-oak or pecan posts, the outside or bounding rows of which were sheathed up with boards four feet or so, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... incidental allusions to Mr. Shiner was to restrain a considerable flow of spontaneous chat that would otherwise have burst from young Dewy along the drive homeward. And a certain remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner, kept the young ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... "Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent.... Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... pausing for breath, went on, with the greatest complacency, in a rambling manner sometimes incidental to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... alongside the ship, but the current was too strong for him, and before a rope could be heaved to him, he gradually dropped astern. The fall had been injured by one of the enemy's shot. Another boat was now lowered, but in consequence of the darkness, and the disarrangement incidental to the work in which the men had been engaged, more delay than usual occurred. At last the boat was lowered and manned, and Adair and Mr Cherry jumping into her, away they pulled to pick up, in the first place, the poor fellow who had just fallen into the water. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... and effect in our minds about "a good carriage." We imagine that a ramrod-like stiffening of the backbone, with the head erect, shoulders thrown back and chest protruded, is a cause of health, instead of simply being an effect, or one of the incidental symptoms thereof. And we often proceed to drill our unfortunate patients into this really cramped and irrational attitude, under the impression that by making them look better we shall cause them actually to become so. The head-erect, chest-out, fingers-down-the-seam-of-your ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... the mind has no corporeal organ: wherefore it was said in the authority quoted above that intellectual contemplation has neither "bitterness," nor "tediousness." Since, however, the human mind, in contemplation, makes use of the sensitive powers of apprehension, to whose acts weariness is incidental; therefore some affliction or pain is indirectly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... prevented is always impregnable; and the only perfect King of England was he who was smothered. Exactly be cause Jacobitism failed we cannot call it a failure. Precisely because the Commune collapsed as a rebellion we cannot say that it collapsed as a system. But such outbursts were brief or incidental. Few people realize how many of the largest efforts, the facts that will fill history, were frustrated in their full design and come down to us as gigantic cripples. I have only space to allude to the two largest facts of modern history: the Catholic ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton



Words linked to "Incidental" :   point, unessential, basic, parenthetical, omissible, parenthetic, inessential, subsequent, expense, plural, peripheral, plural form, incidental expense, secondary, item



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