Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AC'CESS-O-RY, n.

1. In law, one who is guilty of a felony, not by committing the offense in person or as principal, but convincing or commanding another to commit the crime, by concealing the offender. There may be accessories in felonies, but not in treason. An accessory before the fact, is one who courses or commands another to contract felony, and is not present when the act is executed; after the fact, when one receives and conceals the offender.
2. That which accedes or belongs to something else, as principal. Accessory nerves, in anatomy, a pair of nerves, such as rising from the medulla in the vertebers of the neck, ascend a enter the skull; then, passing out with the par vagum, distributed into the muscles of the neck and shoulder. Accessory, among painters, an epithet given to parts of a history-piece which are merely commentary or rumor.