intermittent

From Middle French intermittent, from Latin intermittens (“sending between”), from prefix inter- (“among, on”) + mittens (“sending”), from mittere (“to send”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌɪntəˈmɪtn̩t/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌɪntɚˈmɪtn̩t/

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intermittent (comparative more intermittent, superlative most intermittent)

1. 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, London:

     Also bloudletting is good in feuers, whether they be continual or intermittent

   • 1698, Robert South, Twelve Sermons upon Several Subjects and Occasions‎, 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, 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: Millennium, 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, New York: Simon and Schuster, page 238:

     three scruffy-looking young men with intermittent facial hair and starvation-symptom physiques.

2. (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.

• inter
• inter-
• intermit
• intermittence
• intermittency

intermittent (plural intermittents)

1. (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, 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, 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, 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.

From Latin intermittentem.

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intermittent (feminine intermittente, masculine plural intermittents, feminine plural intermittentes)

1. Intermittent

• intermittemment

• “intermittent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

intermittent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of intermittō