Encased in iron lungs, tortured victims vainly chased slumber through long, fitful nights.
He enters his home and passes a fitful night.
It smeared the faces of the men in the room, fighting a losing, fitful battle with the shadows.
It wasn't until dawn that she finally drifted off into an all too brief and fitful sleep.
They passed into the fitful darkness of the dock cavern.
You can not, in a post-industrial nation, make more than fitful sense of an early Victorian doctrine of class-war.
Collocations
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY►fitful sleep
John awoke from a fitful sleep.
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES►a fitful/restless/uneasy sleep
(=in which you keep moving or waking)· My alarm woke me from a fitful sleep.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSNOUN►sleep
· It wasn't until dawn that she finally drifted off into an all too brief and fitful sleep.· Thunder woke her out of a fitful sleep.
not regular, and starting and stopping often: John awoke from a fitful sleep. The peace talks only seem to be making fitful progress.—fitfully adverb: She slept fitfully.