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Contemporaneous vs Spontaneous - What's the difference?

contemporaneous | spontaneous |

As adjectives the difference between contemporaneous and spontaneous

is that contemporaneous is existing or created in the same period of time while spontaneous is self-generated; happening without any apparent external cause.

contemporaneous

English

Adjective

(-)
  • Existing or created in the same period of time.
    • Look in other contemporaneous works to see whether that idea was common then.
  • * 1973 , , quoted in Harun Kofi Wangara, “African Perspective on History”, in John H. Johnson (editor and publisher), Black World , Volume 23 Number 4 (February 1974), page 59:
    • Then, if this script is deciphered, we will have in that respect the testimony of an African language which goes back 2,400 years, that is to say [back to a period] fairly contemporaneous with Latin and other languages of antiquity.
  • * on Wikipedia
    • The Network Control Program (NCP) provided the middle layers of the protocol stack running on host computers of the ARPANET, the predecessor to the modern Internet. Although sometimes the abbreviation NCP is mistakenly expanded to Network Control Protocol, this term is not found in the contemporaneous documentation.
  • * 12 July 2012 , Sam Adams, AV Club Ice Age: Continental Drift
  • *:Preceded by a Simpsons short shot in 3-D—perhaps the only thing more superfluous than a fourth Ice Age movie—Ice Age: Continental Drift finds a retinue of vaguely contemporaneous animals coping with life in the post-Pangaea age.

    • Usage notes

    * For events which occur at precisely the same time, simultaneous is used.

    Synonyms

    * (existing or created in the same period of time) contemporary, coeval, cotemporal

    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

    Related terms

    * spontaneous combustion