How to Use unbidden in a Sentence

unbidden

adjective
  • Content streams from her unbidden, freely, if not exactly for free.
    — Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 17 Apr. 2023
  • Our kids start waking up and doing their schoolwork, unbidden.
    — Pamela Druckerman, The New York Review of Books, 12 May 2020
  • Love had grown slowly and unbidden, like a plant given exactly the right amount of water and light.
    — Daisy Jones, Vogue, 3 Mar. 2023
  • Being told to eat something is jarring and unkind, the kind of unbidden comment that can stay with you for days, weeks, months, years.
    — Your Fat Friend, SELF, 1 Sep. 2020
  • But the violence that came unbidden eclipses our differences.
    — Stephen Trimble, Denver Post, 8 Apr. 2026
  • What is so remarkable here is that hundreds of readers had civil discourse unbidden.
    — Cquinn, cleveland, 16 Sep. 2023
  • Standards from every period of our lives remain cross-indexed in our brains to be called up in whole, or in part, or, in fact, to come to mind unbidden.
    — E.l. Doctorow, Harper's Magazine, 2 Jan. 2025
  • Like runner’s high, or epiphany in prayer, the goonstate is not the point of the practice, but rather its occasional and unbidden reward.
    — Daniel Kolitz, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Sometimes the vibe arrives unbidden, overnight, in Cannon’s iPhone.
    — Jody Rosen, New York Times, 17 Aug. 2022
  • Random and unbidden, the mutation appeared on the chromosome of a single person, who is known as the founder.
    — Jeff Wheelwright, Discover Magazine, 20 May 2012
  • After dessert, Caro went unbidden to the kitchen, returning with a thermal carafe of hot water and a brown jar of Nescafé.
    — Lily Meyer, The Atlantic, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Some users, when confronted by Guy’s unbidden tweets in their timelines, chose to attack him or mock him to their followers, tagging him in.
    — WIRED, 27 Jan. 2023
  • Ask someone to check your house for any unexpected leave-behinds, such as door hangers from the local pizza joint or those phone books full of ads that show up on the front porch unbidden each year.
    — Safestreets Usa, The Seattle Times, 20 July 2017
  • Her thoughts drifted, unbidden, toward weighty questions about the relationship between her traumatic brain injury and her sense of self.
    — Mike Mariani, Wired, 16 Aug. 2022
  • Sometimes violets come up, unbidden.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Then the voice interrupted, unbidden.
    — Stephen Humphries, Christian Science Monitor, 10 Oct. 2025
  • The Giants’ special teams unit would probably have trotted onto the field unbidden in such situations.
    — Mike Tanier, New York Times, 8 Dec. 2021
  • When a character or a story line arrives unbidden, when my initial intention gets hijacked by my subconscious—for me, that’s where the excitement lies.
    — Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2022
  • Insights and kinships emerge almost unbidden—called forth through juxtaposition.
    — Literary Hub, 1 June 2026
  • Intrusive, violent thoughts came unbidden, whether from severe anxiety or bone-deep exhaustion.
    — Jacqui Palumbo, CNN, 13 Dec. 2022
  • For the average shopper, this opacity can magnify the sense that a particular style has become inescapable overnight, largely unbidden.
    — Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 23 June 2022
  • The voices of others jostle for our attention—a father’s criticism, a colleague’s snide comment, an unbidden conversation that unfolds on its own.
    — T. M. Luhrmann, Harper’s Magazine , 16 Feb. 2022
  • The package arrived, unbidden, two days into New York City’s lockdown in March 2020.
    — New York Times, 25 May 2022
  • Last year, amid the continuing tumult following George Floyd’s murder, Ben Jaffe brought up some of these issues unbidden.
    — Brett Martin, New York Times, 5 Oct. 2022
  • The obsessions—the unbidden thoughts driving the compulsions—are comparatively less discussed.
    — Krista Stevens, Longreads, 10 Mar. 2021
  • In fact, Ruth learns of their engagement only when Alan approaches her and speaks to her unbidden, something that does not happen between unmarried men and women on the Dorf.
    — Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2025
  • My mind went searching unbidden into deep recesses of memory where countless displays of Native American ethnography, seen over years, are stored.
    — Murray Whyte, BostonGlobe.com, 18 Aug. 2022
  • The two experiences combined, unbidden, into a vertiginous sensation of time travel.
    — Washington Post, 8 July 2021
  • All those monthly users interacting with all the ads that choke Facebook’s timeline and clutter its margins and blunder unbidden into every available space generate a lot of money for the company.
    — David Roth, The New Republic, 22 Dec. 2021
  • Involuntary memory — the unbidden remembrance of things past — is the book’s most celebrated contribution to narrative form.
    — Charles Arrowsmith, Washington Post, 17 Nov. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unbidden.' 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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