What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Spontaneous vs Sudden - What's the difference?

spontaneous | sudden |

As adjectives the difference between spontaneous and sudden

is that spontaneous is self-generated; happening without any apparent external cause while sudden is happening quickly and with little or no warning.

As an adverb sudden is

suddenly.

As a noun sudden is

an unexpected occurrence; a surprise.

spontaneous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Self-generated; happening without any apparent external cause.
  • He made a spontaneous offer of help.
  • Done by one's own free choice, or without planning.
  • proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external or conscious constraint
  • arising from a momentary impulse
  • controlled and directed internally; self-active; spontaneous movement characteristic of living things
  • produced without being planted or without human labor]]; [[endemic, indigenous
  • a spontaneous growth of wood
  • Random.
  • Sudden, without warning.
  • Synonyms

    * (self-generated) autonomous * (sense, done by one's own free choice) autonomous * autonomous

    Derived terms

    * spontaneousity

    sudden

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Happening quickly and with little or no warning.
  • *, chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}
  • (obsolete) Hastily prepared or employed; quick; rapid.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Never was such a sudden scholar made.
  • * Milton
  • the apples of Asphaltis, appearing goodly to the sudden eye
  • (obsolete) Hasty; violent; rash; precipitate.
  • * Shakespeare
  • I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden

    Antonyms

    * gradual * unsudden

    Derived terms

    * all of a sudden * sudden death * suddenly * suddenness * suddenwoven

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • (poetic) Suddenly.
  • * Milton
  • Herbs of every leaf that sudden flowered.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) An unexpected occurrence; a surprise.
  • Derived terms

    * all of a sudden * all of the sudden * of a sudden

    Statistics

    *