How to Use spontaneous combustion in a Sentence

spontaneous combustion

noun
  • In 2021, some of the experts called in thought there may have been spontaneous combustion.
    — Eric Boodman, STAT, 18 Apr. 2023
  • It was caused by spontaneous combustion, Cal Fire said, and was being allowed to burn into the night.
    — Sarah Ravani, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 Feb. 2023
  • Local officials say the fire is believed to have been caused by spontaneous combustion, which isn’t unusual for a coal mine fire.
    — Sara Ruberg, NBC News, 21 Dec. 2022
  • Almost a Tesla, less risk of spontaneous combustion.
    — Pat Beall, Sun Sentinel, 20 Feb. 2026
  • Those conditions are borne out in Dickens’s fiction, which is filled with death of all kinds (murder, drowning, and in once case spontaneous combustion).
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 16 Sep. 2020
  • The fire ignited by spontaneous combustion.
    — Logan Smith, CBS News, 11 Apr. 2026
  • The fans think Slayer’s act onstage is spontaneous combustion, a spark of wicked enthusiasm setting off a firestorm of malevolence.
    — Bob Larsen, SPIN, 12 Feb. 2022
  • The fire was trigged in a coal pillar through spontaneous combustion, a not uncommon risk for mines in the Book Cliffs of Utah and Colorado.
    — Brian Maffly, The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Here’s an overdose in one room, and a person stabbed with an ancient sword in another, a snakebite on the second floor of a hotel, a spontaneous combustion, a man in skeleton makeup cackling through a compound fracture.
    — Katie Walsh, chicagotribune.com, 20 Oct. 2020
  • When the two chemicals came into contact with one another, there was a spontaneous combustion reaction that would propel the ascent module off of the descent module and into lunar orbit.
    — Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, 24 July 2019
  • The Mesa mulch fire garnered a lot of attention as the fire, likely due to spontaneous combustion, was expected to burn for nearly 24 to 48 hours as fire crews monitored it.
    — The Arizona Republic, 6 June 2023
  • Famous for their electric-blue fire (created by the spontaneous combustion of subterranean gasses) and toxic yellow smoke, the mines would make an interesting photography project, Louie thought.
    — Michael Hardy, Wired, 17 Feb. 2020
  • Much of the IndyDrum plant was heavily damaged in a May 2014 fire caused by spontaneous combustion of chemicals that had been mixed with sawdust used to clean drums.
    — Rick Barrett, USA TODAY, 20 Dec. 2017
  • In this delightfully outrageous tale, Holmes and sidekick John Watson must determine how and why four government officials have died through spontaneous combustion.
    — Carol Memmott, Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2022
  • Coal is another archetypal example of spontaneous combustion.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 9 Jan. 2023
  • Ruby’s spontaneous combustion in the opening scenes of the series is an extremely effective way to lay out the endpoint of the Beauty, even if this sequence raises a lot of questions that the series doesn’t really answer about whether the transformed have superpowers.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 10 Mar. 2026
  • Such watercooler viewing experiences occur like spontaneous combustion.
    — Grace Byron, Vulture, 20 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'spontaneous combustion.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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