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Coming without regularity; occasional; incidental; as, casual expenses. A constant habit, rather than a casual gesture. Hawthorne.

An event; a fact; a particular incident. The sculptor had in his thoughts the conqoeror weeping for new worlds, or the like circumstances in histery. Addison.

Consisting in, or pertaining to, circumstances or particular incidents. The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety. Paley.

r fact of commencing; rise; origin; beginnig; start. The time of Henry VII . . . nearly coincides with the commencement of what is termed "modern history."

Rightfully or properly belonging; incident; -- followed by to. [Rare, except in legal usage.] That is the privillege of the infinite Author of things, . . . but is not competent to any finite being. Locke.

To unite or agree (in action or opinion); to join; to act jointly; to agree; to coincide; to correspond. Mr. Burke concurred with Lord Chatham in opinion. Fox. Tories and Whigs had concurred in paying honor to Walker. Makaulay. This concurs directly with the letter. Shak.

A common right; coincidence of equal powers; as, a concurrence of jurisdiction in two different courts.

Coincidence, as that of lines or figures laid over one another.

Act of concurring; coincidence; concurrence. The consilience of inductions takes place when one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from another different class. Whewell.

Possible, or liable, but not certain, to occur; incidental; casual. Weighing so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage. Burke.

, on which every good work so much depends. South. Critical angle (Optics), that angle of incidence of a luminous ray at which it is wholly reflected, and no portion of it transmitted. The sine of this angle is the reciprocal of the refractive index of the medium. -- Critical philosophy, the metaphysical system of Kan…

Having power to determine; limiting; shaping; directing; conclusive. Incidents . . . determinative of their course. I. Taylor. Determinative tables (Nat. Hist.), tables presenting the specific character of minerals, plants, etc., to assist in determining the species to which a specimen belongs.

A charge made to students and barristers for incidental repairs of the rooms they occupy. [Eng.]

Not coincident as to motive or end. His own ends, which must needs be often eccentric to those of his master. Bacon.

A meeting face to face; a running against; a sudden or incidental meeting; an interview. To shun the encounter of the vulgar crowd. Pope.

A separate incident, story, or action, introduced for the purpose of giving a greater variety to the events related; an incidental narrative, or digression, separable from the main subject, but naturally arising from it.

The great circle of the celestial sphere, coincident with the plane of the earth's equator; -- so called because when the sun is in it, the days and nights are of equal length; hence called also the equinoctial, and on maps, globes, etc., the equinoctial line. Equator of the sun or of a planet (Astron.), the great circ…

That which comes, arrives, or happens; that which falls out; any incident, good or bad. "The events of his early years." Macaulay. To watch quietly the course of events. Jowett (Thucyd. ) There is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked. Eccl. ix. 2.

Full of, or rich in, events or incidents; as, an eventful journey; an eventful period of history; an eventful period of life.

enerally written with little regard to regularity or method, and abounding with ludicrous incidents and expressions. Farce is that in poetry which "grotesque" is in a picture: the persons and action of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false. Dryden.