SPONTANEITY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Spontaneity

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/spˌɑntənˈiəti/ Listen

noun

Spontaneity n. (pl. spontaneities)

The quality or state of being spontaneous, or acting from native feeling, proneness, or temperament, without constraint or external force. "Romney Leigh, who lives by diagrams, And crosses not the spontaneities Of all his individual, personal life With formal universals."

(Biol.)

(a)

The tendency to undergo change, characteristic of both animal and vegetable organisms, and not restrained or checked by the environment.

(b)

The tendency to activity of muscular tissue, including the voluntary muscles, when in a state of healthful vigor and refreshment.

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Etymology of 'Spontaneity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spontaneity" Quotes from Famous Books

... author is metamorphosed into a victualler. Many persons shake their heads at this transformation. To me the profession of my father is an object of affection; I owe it an assured livelihood. Who knows but that the author in me also owes it much of the spontaneity and joy ...

— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... of Collegiate Alumnae) have seriously discussed the question whether the college course in literature made them nearer or farther from creating literature themselves. The Editor of Harper's Monthly has recorded that "the spontaneity and freedom of subjective construction" in certain American authors was only made possible, probably, by their having escaped an early academic training. The Century Magazine has been so struck with the fact that hardly a single writer of original power before the public has been a regular college ...

— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... when he saw the two women and only a close observer would have noticed that his greeting lacked its customary spontaneity and heartiness. He at once made himself particularly agreeable to Fanny; but, while he chatted and laughed with his sister-in-law, anyone could see that he studiously avoided addressing his wife directly or even meeting her eye. To one who knew him well, his manner would ...

— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... her usual spontaneity. And she felt, if she did not explain, the wideness of her eyes. Her father did not look as if anything worried him. It was a way of his, however, not to show stress or worry. Lenore ate in silence until Rose left the dining-room, and then she ...

— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity and emotion which we usually associate with lyrical poetry. There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the charming ones on his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and this even though the rigid ...

— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

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