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Definition
done with little or no preparation or planning- She gave an extemporaneous talk on picking a college.
extemporaneous = done with little or no preparation or planning
- "Who the devil is there in Ramilly County," muttered Amory aloud, "who would deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a soaking haystack?"F. Scott Fitzgerald -- This Side of Paradise
- No notes were in his hand, for he was one of the most brilliant extemporaneous speakers ever to sit in the Senate.John F. Kennedy -- Profiles in Courage
- As soon as classes ended in the spring of 1989, Chris took his Datsun on another prolonged, extemporaneous road trip.Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild
- When recording his essay, Gingrich discarded what he'd written and spoke this piece extemporaneously.Jay Allison, et al. -- This I Believe
- The style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King's Lorton.George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss
- It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce premeditated effects extemporaneously."Edith Wharton -- The House of Mirth
- Assist me, some extemporal god of rime, for I am sure I shall turn sonneter.William Shakespeare -- Love's Labour's Lost
- He could speak extemporaneously and, if need be, almost without limit.David McCullough -- John Adams
- Some grant it; some despise it; one makes it the sole cry of her extemporaneous sermon upon the death of her granddaughter.Toni Morrison -- Song of Solomon
- In democracies men are never stationary; a thousand chances waft them to and fro, and their life is always the sport of unforeseen or (so to speak) extemporaneous circumstances.Alexis de Toqueville -- Democracy In America, Volume 2
- [249] Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Selected Essays
- Darley and Batson met with a group of seminarians, individually, and asked each one to prepare a short, extemporaneous talk on a given biblical theme, then walk over to a nearby building to present it.Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point
- "Ah, Adolph, is it you?" said his master, offering his hand to him; "how are you, boy?" while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an extemporary speech, which he had been preparing, with great care, for a fortnight before.Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom's Cabin
- If I supposed you to be related to Foreign Powers or Native Boards, it is because you have a manner, a carriage, a dignity, which you will excuse my saying that none but yourself (with the single exception perhaps of the tragic muse, when playing extemporaneously on the barrel organ before the East India Company) can parallel.Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby
- If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare, and the circulation of the public is hindered, the neighbors immediately constitute a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of recurring to an authority superior to that of the persons immediately concerned.Alexis de Toqueville -- Democracy In America, Volume 1
- And therefore he that has most experience in any kind of businesse, has most Signes, whereby to guesse at the Future time, and consequently is the most prudent: And so much more prudent than he that is new in that kind of business, as not to be equalled by any advantage of naturall and extemporary wit: though perhaps many young men think the contrary.Thomas Hobbes -- Leviathan
- All the same, Joachim discovered him one evening at the usual social gathering in the company of Hermine Kleefeld, her tablemates Ganser and Rasmussen, and, as a fifth, the lad with the monocle and saltcellar fingernail; with his eyes glittering undeniably brighter than usual and with emotion in his voice, Hans Castorp had delivered an extemporaneous oration on Frau Chauchat's peculiar and exotic facial features, while his audience exchanged glances, nudged one another, and tittered.Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain
- Inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous inclosures at country fairs, were the ready theaters of strolling players.Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Selected Essays
- The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons.Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Selected Essays