Equivalent sentences made from the original sentence(~happen to, by chance, ~accidently) Are the sentence 1 and the 2 mean the same thing as the sentence 1 and have the same nuance? I slightly change

Amy

Equivalent sentences made from the original sentence(~happen to, by chance, ~accidently) Are the sentence 1 and the 2 mean the same thing as the sentence 1 and have the same nuance? I slightly changed some words and put the other words in the sentence 1, the 2 from the original. "I happened to come across the scientific definitions while reading.(the original)" 1. I came across the scientific definitions by chance while reading. 2. I came across the scientific definitions accidently while reading.

Jul 17, 2012 12:22 PM

Answers · 3

Yes, sentence 1 and 2 both convey the same meaning here. However, using "accidently" carries a slight nuance with it; it makes it sound like the discovery may have been either bad or completely unexpected/unrelated to what you were doing. Because you were reading, the possibility was always there for you to discover the definitions, so you stumbled upon them "by chance," not accidently, even if you weren't actively looking for definitions. For a casual situation like this, using "by chance" is the most natural way to go.

July 17, 2012

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