Crossword clues for spontaneous
spontaneous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Spontaneous \Spon*ta"ne*ous\ (sp[o^]n*t[=a]"n[-e]*[u^]s), a. [L. spontaneus, fr. sponte of free will, voluntarily.]
Proceeding from natural feeling, temperament, or disposition, or from a native internal proneness, readiness, or tendency, without constraint; as, a spontaneous gift or proposition.
Proceeding from, or acting by, internal impulse, energy, or natural law, without external force; as, spontaneous motion; spontaneous growth.
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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.
Syn: Voluntary; uncompelled; willing.
Usage: 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.''
--J. Seed.Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their firstborn away.
--Goldsmith. [1913 Webster] -- Spon*ta"ne*ous*ly, adv. -- Spon*ta"ne*ous*ness, n.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1650s, "occurring without external stimulus," from Late Latin spontaneus "willing, of one's free will," from Latin (sua) sponte "of one's own accord, willingly;" of uncertain origin. Related: Spontaneously; spontaneousness. Used earlier of persons and characters, with a sense "acting of one's own accord" (c.1200). Spontaneous combustion first attested 1795. Spontaneous generation (the phrase, not the feat) attested from 1650s.
Wiktionary
a. 1 self-generated; happening without any apparent external cause. 2 Done by one's own free choice, or without planning. 3 proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external or conscious constraint 4 arising from a momentary impulse 5 controlled and directed internally; self-active; spontaneous movement characteristic of living things 6 produced without being planted or without human manual labor; endemic 7 Random. 8 Sudden, without warning.
WordNet
adj. happening or arising without apparent external cause; "spontaneous laughter"; "spontaneous combustion"; "a spontaneous abortion" [syn: self-generated] [ant: induced]
said or done without having been planned or written in advance; "he made a few ad-lib remarks" [syn: ad-lib, unwritten]
produced without being planted or without human labor; "wild strawberries" [syn: wild]
Wikipedia
Spontaneous is a live album by bassist and composer William Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, which was recorded at the Vision Festival in New York in 2002 and released on the Italian Splasc(H) label.
Spontaneous may refer to:
- Spontaneous abortion
- Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis
- Spontaneous combustion
- Spontaneous declaration
- Spontaneous emission
- Spontaneous fission
- Spontaneous generation
- Spontaneous human combustion
- Spontaneous Music Ensemble
- Spontaneous order
- Spontaneous process
- Spontaneous remission
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking
- Spontaneous (album) by William Parker & the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
Usage examples of "spontaneous".
Buchanan describes a case illustrative of the etiology of spontaneous amputation of limbs in utero Nebinger reports a case of abortion, showing commencing amputation of the left thigh from being encircled by the funis.
Simpson published an article on spontaneous amputation of the forearm and rudimentary regeneration of the hand in the fetus.
The Chill of Inspiration: Spontaneous Reminiscences by Seventeen Pioneers of DT-Cycle Lithiumized Annular Fusion, ed.
Algora speaks of an abdominal pregnancy in which there was spontaneous perforation of the anterior abdominal parietes, followed by death.
It might have been that quixotism had inspired his infatuate gesture, but it might quite as conceivably have been everyday vanity or plain cussedness: a noble impulse to serve a pretty lady in distress, a spontaneous device to engage her interest, or a low desire to plague a personality as antipathetic to his own as that of a rattlesnake.
It is the art of doing a kindness which both bestows pleasure and gains it by bestowing it, and which does its office by natural and spontaneous impulse.
Warren mentions spontaneous expulsion of a horse-shoe nail from the bronchus of a boy of two and one-half years.
It was a natural and spontaneous lithomancy, and it carried no rumors to him.
Your nutritionist would have nodded over his wheat germ or his macrobiotic rice cakes, your priest would have dropped to his knees and looked at the sky, your geneticist would have a pet theory about generation-skipping and would assure you that your grandparents probably had spontaneous remissions, too, and never knew it.
The source of the flooding was all too easy to locate: close to the big fuel storage tanks just outwith the perimeter of the airport itself, a wide breach had appeared in the dyke of the canal to the south: the debris, stones and mud that were scattered along the top of the dyke on either side of the breach left no doubt that the rupture of the containing dyke had not been of a natural or spontaneous origin.
These were the Archaea, that third order of life along with bacteria and eucarya -and in this case, also citizens of the panspermic cloud which four billion years before fell on Mars from space, having flown many light-years from their point of spontaneous generation around an early second-generation star.
But his sudden, gratuitous advice, not unkindly spoken, had induced in Maia a typically spontaneous impulse towards the only kind of reciprocation at her command.
There is an instance recorded of the death of a fetus occurring near term, its retention and subsequent discharge being through a spontaneous opening in the abdominal wall one or two months after.
It was as though the spontaneous evolutions of many distinct flocks of redshank and dunlin were multiplied a thousand-fold in complexity, and subordinated to a single ever-developing terpsichorean theme.
Sonnets: - Sonnet I - - Sonnet II - - Sonnet III - - Sonnet IV - - Sonnet V - - Sonnet VI - - Sonnet VII - - Sonnet VIII - - Sonnet IX - - Sonnet X - - Sonnet XI - - Sonnet XII - Bellinglise Liebestod Resurgam A Message to America Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France Introduction by William Archer This book contains the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic, biography of a very rare spirit.