spontaneously

American  

[spon-tey-nee-uhs-lee] / spɒnˈteɪ ni əs li /

adverb

1. 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.

2. in an impulsive way.

   It was so cold the other night that I spontaneously booked a trip to Turks and Caicos.

3. 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.

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Other Word Forms

• nonspontaneously adverb
• semispontaneously adverb
• subspontaneously adverb
• unspontaneously adverb

Etymology

Origin of spontaneously

spontaneous ( def. ) + -ly

Example Sentences

She’s still addicted to that guitar, spontaneously singing the melody over the phone.

From The Wall Street Journal

The project is designed to look for an extremely rare event in which muonium, a short lived system made of a positive muon bound to an electron, spontaneously transforms into antimuonium, its antimatter counterpart.

From Science Daily

The committed band of Minneapolis residents organized spontaneously, defying the deep-freeze conditions to confront the operation that has ensnared longtime city residents.

From Barron's

He did find that some people had skin cells that changed color spontaneously, but those were an indication of illness, or conditions like vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder where healthy melanin cells die or stop working.

From Literature

Nearly a dozen ski resorts sit within 100 miles of Denver, so if you come between December and March, pack some gear in case you’re spontaneously gripped by the need to shred.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• automatically
• immediately
• unconsciously