incidentally.

1. As a secondary or accompanying matter rather than the main purpose.

2. By way of an aside or additional remark.

3. By chance or without deliberate search for that particular result.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• incidentally relevant
• incidentally affected

On the page

The issue was incidentally relevant to the larger question.

The revision incidentally affected a requirement outside its stated purpose.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Invariable adverb; use more or most only where natural. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: institutional and conceptual change, philosophical orientation, qualification of recurrence and degree. Disciplines: academic writing, philosophy, cross-disciplinary analysis. Commonness: moderately common.