intermittent
/ɪntəˈmɪt(ə)nt
/adjective
Occurring at irregular intervals; not continuous or steady: intermittent rain...
- Despite heavy, continuous rain and intermittent patches of fog, it would take an earthquake to stop us!
- I don't care if rain is patchy or scattered or intermittent or coming in from an easterly direction.
- The sound can be of any pitch or type, continuous or intermittent.
Synonyms
sporadic, irregular, fitful, spasmodic, broken, fragmentary, discontinuous, disconnected, isolated, odd, random, patchy, scattered;
on again and off again, on and off, in fits and starts;
occasional, periodic, cyclic, recurrent, recurring
Derivatives
intermittence
/ noun ...- In studying women's earnings, it is crucial to consider the aspect of interruption or intermittence of the work experience commonly observed for women.
- When is intermittence a feature of the technology itself, and when is it an aspect of user practices?
- A run like this, without favourable intermittences, is extremely rare but always possible.
intermittency
- If the intermittency we see now continues, we're going to lose this fish.
- It's now been five days or so since Telecom's DSL service began suffering from extensive intermittency and, at times, total outages.
- Probabilistic transitions are used to model the stochastic behavior of components, such as failure and intermittency.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin intermittent- 'ceasing', from the verb intermittere (see intermit).