On November 4, 1791, a multitribal confederation, formed to resist colonial expansion into their historical homelands, routs a large contingent of U.S. troops along the Wabash River in western Ohio. This one-sided clash, known as the Battle of the Wabash or St. Clair’s Defeat, would be the biggest victory ever won by Native Americans over […]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 4, 2025 is:

spontaneous • \spahn-TAY-nee-us\  • adjective

Spontaneous describes something that is done or said in a natural and often sudden way and without a lot of thought or planning. It can describe a person who does things that have not been planned but that seem enjoyable and worth doing at a particular time.

// The kitten captured our hearts, and we made the spontaneous decision to adopt.

// He's a fun and spontaneous guy, always ready for the next big adventure.

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Examples:

"The Harlem Renaissance was filled with poetry and song—and with performance, as enshrined in [filmmaker William] Greaves's footage which features many spontaneous, thrillingly theatrical recitations of poems by Bontemps, Hughes, Cullen, and McKay." — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 23 Sept. 2025

Did you know?

When English philosopher Thomas Hobbes penned his 1654 treatise Of Libertie and Necessitie he included the following: "all voluntary actions … are called also spontaneous, and said to be done by a man's own accord." Hobbes was writing in English, but he knew Latin perfectly well too, including the source of spontaneous; the word comes (via Late Latin spontāneus, meaning "voluntary, unconstrained") from the Latin sponte, meaning "of one's free will, voluntarily." In modern use, the word spontaneous is frequently heard in more mundane settings, where it often describes what is done or said without a lot of thought or planning.

By Christian J. Collier