SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Spontaneous combustion

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/spɑntˈeɪniəs kəmbˈəstʃən/ Listen

adjective

Spontaneous adj.

1.

Proceeding from natural feeling, temperament, or disposition, or from a native internal proneness, readiness, or tendency, without constraint; as, a spontaneous gift or proposition.

2.

Proceeding from, or acting by, internal impulse, energy, or natural law, without external force; as, spontaneous motion; spontaneous growth.

3.

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.

Synonyms: Voluntary; uncompelled; willing. 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." "Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their firstborn away."

See images of 'Spontaneous combustion'

Etymology of 'Spontaneous combustion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Spontaneous combustion" Quotes from Famous Books

... burnt it, except the feet, which were under the earth. The next morning Grace Pett was found burnt to a cinder, except her feet. Her fate is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions as a case of spontaneous combustion."[755] ...

— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... keep our emotions hermetically sealed and stowed away under decorous lock and key, polite society having found them inconvenient things to handle, partaking of the nature of nitroglycerine, you know, and liable to spontaneous combustion." ...

— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... him quite forget the Widow. She was an uncertain quantity, like a stick of frozen dynamite that will explode if it is thawed too soon; and there was a bombshell to come which gave more than even promise of producing spontaneous combustion. So Wiley sighed as he fired his cook, and told his men that they ...

— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... finest case of spontaneous combustion physician had ever seen. The doctor had, indeed, read in medical papers of surprising cases, among others that of a shoemaker's wife, a drunken woman who had fallen asleep over her foot warmer, and of whom they had found only a hand and foot. He had, until now, ...

— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now, you're talking straight, Mr Crimmins. ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com