spontaneously
Americanadverb
-
naturally, without premeditation, prompting, or planning.
The author recounts how a fully-fledged exchange market economy emerged spontaneously in his POW camp.
These answers were given spontaneously to an open-ended question that did not offer response options.
-
in an impulsive way.
It was so cold the other night that I spontaneously booked a trip to Turks and Caicos.
-
by a natural process or from an internal force or cause.
A calf should normally stand spontaneously within 60–90 minutes of its birth.
The symptoms resolved spontaneously within 6 months of onset.
Other Word Forms
- nonspontaneously adverb
- semispontaneously adverb
- subspontaneously adverb
- unspontaneously adverb
Etymology
Origin of spontaneously
Explanation
When you do something spontaneously, you do it on a whim, without preparing for it or giving it much thought. If your math teacher spontaneously breaks into a tap dance, it will surprise the whole class. Spontaneously belting out a song on the subway is very different from practicing over many weeks for a choral concert solo. Things that happen spontaneously aren't planned: improvisation in music or theater, for example, happens spontaneously. Spontaneously comes from the adjective spontaneous, with its Late Latin root spontaneus, "willing," or "of one's free will."
Vocabulary lists containing spontaneously
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Duannis was 22 and watching soccer at a cafe when he spontaneously joined Cuba’s biggest antigovernment street protest in decades.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 29, 2026
"Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests", Musk wrote on X.
From BBC • Mar. 16, 2026
The group, according to Burke, spontaneously began chanting an exuberant Australian cheer: “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!”
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026
He designs his gargantuan models spontaneously while working.
From Barron's • Feb. 26, 2026
Too much reactivity and we would spontaneously combust.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
