SPONTANEOUS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Spontaneous

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/spɑntˈeɪniəs/ Listen

adjective

Spontaneous adj.

1.

Proceeding from natural feeling, temperament, or disposition, or from a native internal proneness, readiness, or tendency, without constraint; as, a spontaneous gift or proposition.

2.

Proceeding from, or acting by, internal impulse, energy, or natural law, without external force; as, spontaneous motion; spontaneous growth.

3.

Produced without being planted, or without human labor; as, a spontaneous growth of wood.

Spontaneous combustion, 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.

Spontaneous generation. (Biol.) See under Generation.

Synonyms: Voluntary; uncompelled; willing. Spontaneous, Voluntary. What is voluntary is the result of a volition, or act of choice; it therefore implies some degree of consideration, and may be the result of mere reason without excited feeling. What is spontaneous springs wholly from feeling, or a sudden impulse which admits of no reflection; as, a spontaneous burst of applause. Hence, the term is also applied to things inanimate when they are produced without the determinate purpose or care of man. "Abstinence which is but voluntary fasting, and... exercise which is but voluntary labor." "Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their firstborn away."

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Etymology of 'Spontaneous'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spontaneous" Quotes from Famous Books

... to this subject by an interesting, but short paper by Professor Asa Gray on the movements of the tendrils of some Cucurbitaceous plants. {2} My observations were more than half completed before I learnt that the surprising phenomenon of the spontaneous revolutions of the stems and tendrils of climbing plants had been long ago observed by Palm and by Hugo von Mohl, {3} and had subsequently been the subject of two memoirs by Dutrochet. {4} Nevertheless, I believe that my observations, ...

— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... influence, these lumber-jacks would have crowded in and forcibly borne their champion to the suttler's store for those copious libations, which, in their estimate, was the only fitting conclusion to the scene they had witnessed. As it was they made way. They stood aside in spontaneous and real respect, and the two men passed on in silence leaving the crowd to disperse ...

— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... themselves from the former, is in either case equal vulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to feel, to live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgarity; but all these become vulgar when they are affected and shown off on the authority of others, or to fall in with the fashion ...

— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... progression manifested in other countries where protection has been the ruling principle; thirdly, that free trade was not a necessity imposed by circumstances and position, not the result of a barter of value for value, but of free and spontaneous choice, and as the result of the profound conviction of the superior excellency and adaptability of the abstract principle. We shall deal briefly with the subject, because it has been discussed more at length heretofore in those special articles in which ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... with the manner of stating them. It is surely not ideas that make "Jurgen" stand out so saliently from the dreadful prairie of modern American literature; it is the magnificent writing that is visible on every page of it—writing apparently simple and spontaneous, and yet extraordinarily cunning and painstaking. The current notoriety of "Jurgen" will pass. The Comstocks will turn to new imbecilities, and the followers of literary parades to new marvels. But it will remain an author's ...

— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

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