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volition
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  • •
    They saw the pains I took keeping my back straight during early mass, my hands steepled and held up of my own volition, not perched on the back of a pew as if petition were conversation.  (source)
    volition = will (done consciously and voluntarily without being forced or threatened)
  • •
    He was far too busy letting the joke rush through his fingers, letting hilarity spring forth of it's own volition along his throat, eyes squeezed shut; there it flew, whipping shrapnel in all directions.  (source)
    volition = will
  • •
    "Wish me luck," she said, and then her feet were carrying her toward the dais steps, almost without her volition, and then she was standing on the dais and turning to face the crowd.  (source)
    volition = will (conscious choice)
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Show 10 more with 6 word variations
  • •
    My eyes shut of their own volition.  (source)
    volition = will (without telling them to do it)
  • •
    For an instant it resists, as though volitional,  (source)
    volitional = on purpose (of its own will)
  • •
    We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought.†  (source)
    volitions = desires
  • •
    They would enter that dim grim tight little house where even yet, after four years, the aunt still seemed to be just beyond any door with her hand already on the knob and which Ellen would fill with ten or fifteen minutes of shrill uproar and then depart, taking with her the dreamy and volitionless daughter who had not spoken one word;†  (source)
    volitionless = without choice
    standard suffix: The suffix "-less" in volitionless means without and reverses the meaning of volition. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
  • •
    He rode to the River with Bon and then returned; after a time Sutpen returned home too, from where and for what purpose none were to know until the next Christmas, and that summer passed, the last summer, the last summer of peace and content, with Henry, doubtless without deliberate intent, pleading Bon's suit far better than Bon, than that indolent fatalist had ever bothered to plead it himself, and Judith listening with that serenity, that impenetrable tranquillity which a year or so before had been the young girl's vague and pointless and dreamy unvolition but was now already a mature woman's—a mature woman in love—repose.†  (source)
    unvolition = not done consciously and voluntarily
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unvolition means not and reverses the meaning of volition. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    Fear and guilt are your chronic emotions, they are real and you do deserve them, but they don't come from the superficial reasons you invent to disguise their cause, not from your 'selfishness,' weakness or ignorance, but from a real and basic threat to your existence: fear, because you have abandoned your weapon of survival, guilt, because you know you have done it volitionally.†  (source)
  • •
    "Everybody has to touch it," was what Oscar Johnson had said. "He'll listen to you. Go talk to him." So, sure, he'd gone down to the crater to talk sense to the kid. ... So he'd pressed the grenade against Cacciato's limp hand. Was it touching? Was it volition? Maybe so, maybe not.  (source)
    volition = of his own free will (done consciously and voluntarily)
  • •
    the passive ability, not the volitional will, to endure, there was light somewhere, enough of it for him to distinguish Bon's sleeping face from among the others where he lay wrapped in his blankets, beneath his spread cloak;†  (source)
  • •
    He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.†  (source)
    volitions = desires
  • •
    I remember bow as we stood there joined by that volitionless (yes: it too sentient victim just as she and I were) hand, I cried—perhaps not aloud, not with words (and not to Judith, mind: perhaps I knew already, on the instant I entered the house and saw that face which was at once both more and less than Sutpen, perhaps I knew even then what I could not, would not, must not believe)—I cried And you too?†  (source)
    volitionless = without choice
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