How to Use unbidden in a Sentence
unbidden
adjective-
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
-
Love had grown slowly and unbidden, like a plant given exactly the right amount of water and light.
—Daisy Jones, Vogue, 3 Mar. 2023
-
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
-
The package arrived, unbidden, two days into New York City’s lockdown in March 2020.
—New York Times, 25 May 2022
-
Sometimes the vibe arrives unbidden, overnight, in Cannon’s iPhone.
—Jody Rosen, New York Times, 17 Aug. 2022
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
For the past several months, when all major events were canceled, the Model A’s rolled, unbidden, through San Diego neighborhoods with drivers smiling and waving — and keeping their distance.
—San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 July 2021
-
The Giants’ special teams unit would probably have trotted onto the field unbidden in such situations.
—Mike Tanier, New York Times, 8 Dec. 2021
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
And on Friday evening, two days before the beginning of Hanukkah, the refurbished menorah will be rededicated in a ceremony that will honor Hynes and others for reaching out to the congregation, unbidden, during a time of confusion and need.
—BostonGlobe.com, 20 Dec. 2019
-
The obsessions—the unbidden thoughts driving the compulsions—are comparatively less discussed.
—Krista Stevens, Longreads, 10 Mar. 2021
-
These came now, too, unbidden, a thousand jabs: one after the other, book after book, document after document, photograph after photograph.
—Timothy Snyder, The New York Review of Books, 3 Sep. 2020
-
Kawakami, in her first book to be published in English, considers the agency that women exert over their bodies and charts the emotional underpinnings of physical changes—both intentional and unbidden—with humor and empathy.
—The New Yorker, 11 May 2020
-
Intrusive, violent thoughts came unbidden, whether from severe anxiety or bone-deep exhaustion.
—Jacqui Palumbo, CNN, 13 Dec. 2022
-
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
-
Intuitive folk biology and a moral sense of the special character of humanity which is somehow ineffably tied up into our form and genetic character bubble up unbidden.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 17 Mar. 2013
-
These movies are a paradise of the unbidden, the maligned, the maniacal, the hopelessly, outrageously, unfortunately true — everything Waters commanded.
—Wesley Morris, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022
-
The longtime principal’s influence is clear, said Robin Rosenblum, a former parent association and Stressbusters leader, who said parents often approached her unbidden to recount how Goodwin had helped with a mental-health crisis or family problem.
—Donna St. George, Washington Post, 17 June 2018
-
The two experiences combined, unbidden, into a vertiginous sensation of time travel.
—Washington Post, 8 July 2021
-
Rogowski and Exarchopoulos lend their characters alluring and meaningful moves, and their unbidden, spontaneous attraction quickly ignites.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2023
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.
Last Updated: