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spontaneity

UK/ˈspɒn.tə.neɪ.ə.ti/
nounC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,032 of 15,258neutral

Spontaneity is acting freely on the impulse of the moment. Lose your spontaneity, a moment of spontaneity, admire her spontaneity.

It is prized in art and in company and is very hard to arrange, which is the joke inside every rehearsed spontaneous moment on television. Note the spelling: it is spontaneity rather than spontaneousness, which is a form almost nobody uses.

Definitions of spontaneity

  1. 1nounspontaneityActing freely on the impulse of the moment.C2

    “Their trip had no plan at all, and that spontaneity was what made it so much fun.”

spontaneity is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin spontaneus means voluntary, from sponte, of one's own accord.

  1. Latin

    spontaneus — voluntary

  2. English, today

    spontaneity

From Latin spontaneus (“voluntary”). by surface analysis, spont(aneous) + -aneity. Compare French spontanéité.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

spontaneity in the wild

  • If a person grows up able to maintain his or her spontaneity, that person grows up by a process which Horney calls self-realization.

    Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization

  • The principal subject of the book, however, is what happens when a person's spontaneity is crushed in early life.

    Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the spontaneus family

spontaneousspontaneity

spontaneity — used about once every 4,101 pages · #9,032 · point at the bar for the others