continuity

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The state or quality of being continuous.
2. n. An uninterrupted succession or flow; a coherent whole.
3. n. A detailed script or scenario consulted to avoid discrepancies from shot to shot in a film, allowing the various scenes to be shot out of order.
4. n. Spoken matter serving to link parts of a radio or television program so that no break occurs.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Uninterrupted connection of parts in space or time; uninterruptedness.
2. n. In mathematics and philosophy, a connection of points (or other elements) as intimate as that of the instants or points of an interval of time: thus, the continuity of space consists in this, that a point can move from any one position to any other so that at each instant it shall have a definite and distinct position in space. This statement is not, however, a proper definition of continuity, but only an exemplification drawn from time. The old definitions —the fact that adjacent parts have their limits in common (Aristotle), infinite divisibility (Kant), the fact that between any two points there is a third (which is true of the system of rational numbers)—are inadequate. The less unsatisfactory definition is that of G. Cantor, that continuity is the perfect concatenation of a system of points — words which must be understood in special senses. Cantor calls a system of points concatenated when any two of them being given, and also any finite distance, however small, it is always possible to find a finite number of other points of the system through which by successive steps, each less than the given distance, it would be possible to proceed from one of the given points to the other. He terms a system of points perfect when, whatever point not belonging to the system be given, it is possible to find a finite distance so small that there are not an infinite number of points of the system within that distance of the given point. As examples of a concatenated system not perfect, Cantor gives the rational and also the irrational numbers in any interval. As an example of a perfect system not concatenated, he gives all the numbers whose expression in decimals, however far carried out, would contain no figures except 0 and 9.
3. n. In zoology and anatomy, that part of a thing which lies between the two ends, as the shaft of a long bone, or its diaphysis, as distinguished from its condyles or epiphyses, or the middle portion of the bill of a bird, as distinguished from the base and apex. [Chiefly an anatomical term, and especially a surgical one: as, the fracture of a bone in its continuity.]
4. n. In biology, the existence of successive generations of living beings without any gap or interruption of material composition. See germinal continuity.

Wiktionary

1. n. Lack of interruption or disconnection; the quality of being continuous in space or time.
2. n. uncountable, mathematics A characteristic property of a continuous function.
3. n. A narrative device in episodic fiction where previous and/or future events in a story series are accounted for in present stories.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. the state of being continuous; uninterrupted connection or succession; close union of parts; cohesion.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a detailed script used in making a film in order to avoid discontinuities from shot to shot
2. n. uninterrupted connection or union
3. n. the property of a continuous and connected period of time