adjective

• 1Happening as a result of an external factor or chance rather than design or inherent nature.

  ‘adventitious similarities’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Then, as if in tribute to the adventitious nature of idea generation, the solution came to him in his sleep.’
  • ‘Nowhere was this adventitious attitude to life more evident than in the rural music scene.’
  • ‘The influence a writer can exert is purely adventitious.’
  • ‘Not unnaturally, he basks in adventitious glory.’
  • ‘What the audience identify with are the apparently adventitious features imposed by the logic of the form itself.’
  • ‘So far, the connection has been very adventitious.’
  • ‘All of creation is an adventitious assault and modification of this preexisting ‘condition.’’
  • ‘It was an adventitious consequence of the fixing of the date of the hearing.’
  • ‘But that specification will be partly adventitious.’
  • ‘That result was not an adventitious distortion of the tradition.’
  • ‘It is by no means adventitious that this statement combines an ethical proposition with an economic prescription.’
  • ‘Gouges in the sides may be adventitious consequences of the casting process, but in this context they read as scars.’
  • ‘It does not feel, subjectively, like some interfering, adventitious stuff has been removed.’
  • ‘Opportunities for adventitious habitat creation have been widely accepted.’
  • ‘Light was excluded during this stage to prevent adventitious photodamage.’
  • ‘It was strange how you can run into people in such an adventitious way.’
  • ‘They are adventitious benefits, which for policy reasons are not to be regarded as diminishing the plaintiff's loss.’
  • ‘For his closest friends and family his demise was shockingly adventitious.’
  • ‘So we are not dealing with a case of purely adventitious conversion to Christianity.’
  • ‘The narrative perhaps shares with a good many other such accounts the adventitious quality of a just so story.’

  Synonyms

  unplanned, unpremeditated, accidental, unintentional, unintended, unexpected, unforeseen, involuntary, chance, fortuitous, serendipitous, coincidental, casual, random, fluky, unlooked-for, unhoped-for, not bargained for, out of the blue, without warning

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  1. 1.1Coming from outside; not native.
     ‘the adventitious population’
     More example sentences

     • ‘No adventitious spooks are required to account for this-the ‘laws’ of biochemistry and physics are spooky enough.’
     • ‘One possible source for this high frequency dispersion could be trace amounts of adventitious oxygen or contributions from iron.’
     • ‘Indeed, it has been proposed that these adventitious materials play a role in in meso crystallization.’
     • ‘After all, we have dealt with adventitious GM presence in maize previously on several occasions.’
     Synonyms

     foreign, alien, non-native, outside, external, extraneous, extrinsic

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  2. 1.2Biology Formed accidentally or in an unusual anatomical position.
     ‘adventitious lobes may appear between the primaries’
     More example sentences

     • ‘It has previously been shown that adventitious organogenesis and embryogenesis could occur in parallel from in vitro-cultured tissues of Helianthus.’
     • ‘In adventitious embryony, the embryo develops directly from nucellar or chalazal tissue without an intervening gametophyte stage.’
     • ‘Flight-feather molt categories were symmetric, adventitious, and juvenal.’
     • ‘Asymmetrical patches of growing feathers were considered adventitious replacement and not scored as molt.’
     • ‘Although both mutants were isolated, each is morphologically distinct, suggesting adventitious genetic alterations.’
  3. 1.3Botany (of a root, shoot, etc.) produced in an unusual part of a plant.
     ‘The total number of primary adventitious roots per plant was closely correlated with corm dry weight.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘The young parasite then develops a tubercle, with adventitious roots and a shoot.’
     • ‘Oxygen transport from shoot through adventitious roots has been visualized directly.’
     • ‘After removal, such stem segments could produce adventitious roots under moist soil conditions, and produce new plants.’
     • ‘Plants were washed carefully out of soil and the individual adventitious roots originating from the stem base were removed for testing.’
     • ‘If adventitious rooting could be introduced into a crop like cotton, it could lead to new production efficiencies.’