Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Happening or arising without apparent external cause; self-generated.
- adjective Arising from a natural inclination or impulse and not from forethought or prompting.
- adjective Unconstrained and unstudied in manner or behavior.
- adjective Growing without cultivation or human labor.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Proceeding from a conscious or unconscious internal impulse; occurring or done without the intervention of external causes; in a restricted sense, springing from one's own desire or volition, apart from any external suggestion or incitement.
- Growing naturally, without previous human care.
- Growing as native; indigenous.
- In biology, instinctive or automatic, as some actions of animals which depend upon no external stimulus and are performed without apparent motive or purpose; uninfluenced by external conditions, as a change in structural character. Compare
spontaneity , 2. - Synonyms Willing, etc. (see
voluntary ), instinctive, unbidden.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Proceeding from natural feeling, temperament, or disposition, or from a native internal proneness, readiness, or tendency, without constraint.
- adjective Proceeding from, or acting by, internal impulse, energy, or natural law, without external force
- adjective Produced without being planted, or without human labor.
- adjective combustion produced in a substance by the evolution of heat through the chemical action of its own elements; as, the
spontaneous combustion of waste matter saturated with oil. - adjective (Biol.) See under
Generation .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Self generated ; happening without anyapparent external cause . - adjective Done by one's own
free choice , or withoutplanning . - adjective proceeding from
natural feeling ornative tendency withoutexternal constraint - adjective arising from a momentary
impulse - adjective controlled and directed internally : self-active : spontaneous movement characteristic of living things
- adjective produced without being planted or without human
labor :indigenous - adjective not apparently contrived or manipulated :
natural - adjective Random.
- adjective Sudden, without warning.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective said or done without having been planned or written in advance
- adjective happening or arising without apparent external cause
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Thus, the term spontaneous order may be used to refer strictly to voluntary orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerge from the free actions of many different people, as opposed to coordination that arises from some people being forced to do what other people tell them to do.
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Thus, the term spontaneous order may be used to refer strictly to voluntary orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerge from the free actions of many different people, as opposed to coordination that arises from some people being forced to do what other people tell them to do.
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Darwin, I beliieve used the term spontaneous variations.
Dembski, secret handshakes and Darwinian theory - The Panda's Thumb 2007
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The term spontaneous abortion is defined in the “Management of Spontaneous Abortion” by Dr. Greibel, Dr Halvorsen, Dr Golemon, and Dr. Day.
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Representatives of the state government say the state doesn't back the group, which they call a spontaneous movement by people defending themselves from the Naxalites.
Indian Rights Activist, Freed on Bail, Vows to Continue Work 2009
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You know, we have a lot of new volunteers who have -- they're just what we call spontaneous volunteers.
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You know, we have a lot of new volunteers who have -- they're just what we call spontaneous volunteers.
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We think that when we deal with medicine in brain first, the real source of what he calls spontaneous healing is brain chemistry, and that when we change brain chemistry, we change the mind and facilitate these spontaneous healings and transformations of human health.
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"One thing sure," continued the farmer, a little uneasily, "that fire must have been caused by what they call spontaneous combustion; or else somebody set it on purpose."
Boy Scouts on a Long Hike Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps Archibald Lee Fletcher
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The immediate force which works this change, the life principle of things, is, in the case of organic beings, a subtle something which we call spontaneous variation.
The Soul of the Far East Percival Lowell 1885
writer723 commented on the word spontaneous
spontaneous:
–adjective
Happening or arising without apparent external cause; self-generated. Arising from a natural inclination or impulse and not from external incitement or constraint.
April 17, 2011