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 bees are believed to be Africanized, a cross between local honey bees and African honey bees that first appeared in 1956, when a beekeeper in Brazil accidentally released 26 Tanzanian queen bees and their swarms into the wild. —Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, 16 May 2025

The Dark Ages is more like a line dance that accidentally ends up in a fistfight. —Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 15 May 2025

Many fans expected the festival to happen on Saturday after May 17 was accidentally revealed last month in a Garage Beer contest. —Lisa Gutierrez, Kansas City Star, 14 May 2025

It’s been a bumpy ride, however—the snails returned to the spotlight in 2011, when a faulty fridge accidentally froze 800 of them to death. —Margherita Bassi, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 May 2025

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