Word.ws English Dictionary

sua sponte

sua sponte phrase: without prompting or suggestion; on its own initiative.

Phrase

sua sponte

  1. Without prompting or suggestion; on its own initiative.
    • Decretals... ought, properly speaking, to be distinguished, on the one hand from constitutions... enacted by the Pope sua sponte without reference to any particular case, and on the other hand from rescripts... which apply only to special circumstances or individuals, and constitute no general...1878, "Decretals" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. VII, p. 22

Synonyms of sua sponte

Origin of sua sponte

A borrowing of Latin sua sponte (“at its own prompting; by its own impulse; of its own free will”)

Questions about sua sponte

What does sua sponte mean?
Sua sponte means without prompting or suggestion; on its own initiative.
What part of speech is sua sponte?
Sua sponte is a phrase.

Words near sua sponte in the dictionary

  1. Su-chou
  2. Su-ngai Kolok
  3. Su-ngai Padi
  4. Su-pei
  5. SUA
  6. sua sponte
  7. suaasat
  8. Suabia
  9. Suabian
  10. Suabians
  11. suability

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sua sponte (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “sua sponte.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sua_sponte. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.