intermittent
English
editEtymology
editFrom Middle French intermittent, from Latin intermittens (“sending between”), from prefix inter- (“among, on”) + mittens (“sending”), from mittere (“to send”).
Pronunciation
editAdjective
editintermittent (comparative more intermittent, superlative most intermittent)
- Stopping and starting, occurring, or presenting at intervals; coming after a particular time span.
- Synonyms: periodic, periodical, patchy, spasmodic; see also Thesaurus:discontinuous
- Antonyms: steady, constant, continual
- The day was cloudy with intermittent rain.
- Intermittent bugs are most difficult to reproduce.
- 1564, Philip Moore, chapter 13, in The Hope of Health[1], London:
- Also bloudletting is good in feuers, whether they be continual or intermittent […]
- 1698, Robert South, Twelve Sermons upon Several Subjects and Occasions[2], volume 3, London: Thomas Bennet, page 511:
- […] the Gift of Prophecy […] was in the mind not as an Inhabitant, but as a Guest; that is, by intermittent Returns and Ecstasies, by Occasional Raptures and Revelations; as is clear from what we read of the Prophets in the Old Testament.
- 1792, Richard Cumberland, Calvary: or The Death of Christ[3], London: C. Dilly, Book 5, lines 364-366, p. 164:
- […] Pale through night’s curtain gleam’d
By fits the lunar intermittent ray,
That quiv’ring serv’d to light his lonely steps
- 1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 20, in Lud-in-the-Mist, London: Millenium, published 2000, page 193:
- […] by degrees the talk became as flickering and intermittent as the light of the dying fire, which they were too idle to feed with sticks […]
- 2015, John Irving, chapter 18, in Avenue of Mysteries[4], New York: Simon and Schuster, page 238:
- […] three scruffy-looking young men with intermittent facial hair and starvation-symptom physiques.
- (specifically, geology, of a body of water) Existing only for certain seasons; that is, being dry for part of the year.
- The area has many intermittent lakes and streams.
Derived terms
editRelated terms
editTranslations
editstopping and starting at intervals
geology: being dry for part of the year
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Noun
editintermittent (plural intermittents)
- (medicine, dated) An intermittent fever or disease.
- 1592, Nicholas Gyer, chapter 16, in The English Phlebotomy: or, Method and Way of Healing by Letting of Blood[5], London: Andrew Mansell, page 172:
- Feuers, and especially those that are called intermittents, discontinuing agues, euen naturally at the beginning and their first inuasion, cause vomits: and at the declining, sweats.
- 1733, John Arbuthnot, chapter 6, in An Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies[6], London: J. Tonson, page 144:
- The Bark, which had been ineffectual in the Intermittents of the former Year, was successful in this.
- 1832, Robley Dunglison, “Circulation”, in Human Physiology[7], volume 2, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, page 146:
- In disease, the agency of this system of vessels is an object of attentive study with the pathologist. To its influence in inflammation, we have already alluded; but it is no less exemplified in the more general diseases of the frame, as in the cold, hot, and sweating stages of an intermittent.
French
editEtymology
editFrom Latin intermittentem.
Pronunciation
editAdjective
editintermittent (feminine intermittente, masculine plural intermittents, feminine plural intermittentes)
Derived terms
editFurther reading
edit- “intermittent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Latin
editVerb
editintermittent
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