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adventitious

adjective/ˌædvenˈtɪʃəs/

C2CEFR level
88/100Rarity: very rare
FormalRegister

Arising by chance rather than by design or inherent nature.

The masterpiece owed its haunting colour to a wholly adventitious flaw in the pigment.

Similar: accidental, fortuitous

Origin: From Latin adventicius 'coming from outside', from advenire 'to arrive'.

Topic: chance in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: chance