[Apparently a corruption of accidents (ACCIDENT 9), Fr. accidens, transl. L. accidentia pl. neut., but perhaps a direct formation on the latter treated as a sb. fem. See quot. dated 1751.]
1. That part of Grammar which treats of the Accidents or inflections of words; a book of the rudiments of grammar.
1509. Hawes, Past. Pleas. (1845), V. ix. 23. Dame Gramer … taught me ryght well Fyrst my Donet and then my accidence.
1598. Shaks., Merry Wives, IV. i. 16. I pray you aske him some questions in his Accidence.
1612. Brinsley, Lud. Lit. (1627), iv. 40. Let us begin with the rudiments of the Grammar, I meane the Accedence.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., Accidence, Accidentia, a name chiefly used for a little book, containing the first elements, or rudiments of the Latin tongue.
1840. De Quincey, Style, Wks. XI. 198. With two or three exceptions … we have never seen the writer … who has not sometimes violated the accidence or the syntax of English grammar.
2. Hence, by extension: The rudiments or first principles of any subject.
1562. G. Leigh (title), The Accedence of Armorie.
1664. Butler, Hudibras, II. ii. 221. Their Gospel is an Accidence By which they construe Conscience.
1870. Lowell, Among my Books, Ser. II. (1873), 162. The poets who were just then learning the accidence of their art.
