accidentally

adverb

ac·​ci·​dent·​al·​ly ˌak-sə-ˈdent-lē  -ˈden-tᵊl-ē 

: in an accidental or unintended manner : by accident

I accidentally deleted the file.

The lock prevents the gate from opening accidentally.

Six lionfish were accidentally released from a home aquarium in Biscayne Bay, Fla., during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

—Alcestis Cooky Oberg

The Olympic test was thrown out after the test lab accidentally destroyed the backup sample … that's required to confirm a positive result.

—Christie Aschwanden

He bumped into her accidentally on purpose. [=he bumped into her intentionally but he tried to make it appear to be an accident]

Examples of accidentally in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The needle accidentally punctured Taylor’s lung, causing chest pain and difficulty breathing. — Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2026

The confession came as Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones reacted to a video of a mom digging through a ball pit after her daughter accidentally dropped her phone inside. — Dave Quinn, PEOPLE, 7 Sep. 2026

What’s so immoral about a goal scored accidentally with a hand or arm anyway? — Graham Scott, New York Times, 5 Sep. 2026

The second engraver may have also accidentally created a tiny defect that required them to break up Pilate’s name. — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 3 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for accidentally

• detrimentally
• fundamentally
• governmentally
• incidentally
• incrementally
• instrumentally
• sentimentally
• temperamentally
• coincidentally
• environmentally
• experimentally
• mentally