Phrase guide

incidental music

noun · 2 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

No pronunciation record was provided for this word.

1

noun

Meaning 1

Music that is played as a background to a film, television programme, video game, etc.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable

Topics: entertainment, lifestyle, music

Examples

  • The incidental music helped give the programme its evocative atmosphere.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

2

noun

Meaning 2

music composed to accompany the action of a drama or to fill intervals between scenes

Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

Broader terms: musical composition, opus, composition, piece, piece of music

History

Etymology

No etymology was provided for this word.

Across languages

Translations

8 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Bulgarian: съпровод (sǎprovod) — music played as background
  • Catalan: música incidental — music played as background
  • Chinese Mandarin: 配樂 /配乐 (pèiyuè) — music played as background
  • Finnish: taustamusiikki — music played as background
  • German: Bühnenmusik — music played as background
  • Hungarian: kísérőzene — music played as background
  • Italian: musica incidentale — music played as background
  • Spanish: música incidental — music played as background