SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Spontaneous combustion

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/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."

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Etymology of 'Spontaneous combustion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spontaneous combustion" Quotes from Famous Books

... it. Holy inspiration 161:6 has created states of mind which have been able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; 161:9 while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion. ...

— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... No one dared repeat these rumours, but nevertheless they ran up and down the land. The Jena and now the Liberte! True, the Board of Inquiry, which had investigated the destruction of the Jena, had decided that that catastrophe was due to the spontaneous combustion of the powder in her magazines. France had accepted the verdict; but now a second battleship was gone. It would be too much to ask any one to believe that this was spontaneous combustion, also! Such things do ...

— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... 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. You know why? ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

... 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

... been a hardened atheist and a follower of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedia; then he became a victim to drunkenness in his last days, and, according to the general report, he was carried off by devils to the infernal regions. He had really died of spontaneous combustion, which fact gave rise to such a fabulous story. Her father was a weak-minded man, and her mother, a woman of uncommon energy, had him completely under her thumb. Of his uncles, one had gone melancholy mad; another distinguished himself in mathematics, but he was so eccentric that his ...

— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

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