intermittent

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The problem is intermittent, which is why it seems to come and go.

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Stopping and starting at intervals. See Synonyms at periodic.
  2. adjective Alternately containing and empty of water: an intermittent lake.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (9)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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Examples (50)

  • Mr. Smith continued with his observations as he made his next surgical cuts and Don Giovanni played on Near the time of death, breathing will become strained, intermittent -- It's exactly what you're feeling now, as if each breath could be your last. —  Cat and Mouse
  • His exertions had been intermittent, and he was chiefly known as a brilliant member of fashionable society, a peculiar favorite with women, and remarkable for his abstinence from the coarse debauchery which disgraced his patrician contemporaries. —  Caesar: A Sketch
  • But because renewables are by their very nature intermittent, they cannot have a huge impact unless -- and until -- we develop adequate energy storage technologies and drastically improve our fragile electricity distribution network. —  Web Edition | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  • Sometimes it was intermittent, and came down in devastating floods. —  Freaks on the Fells Three Months' Rustication
  • At first this is intermittent, appearing during work and returning when the horse is at rest. —  Special Report on Diseases of the Horse
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Suggestions Wordniks Suggest

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

fitful ·  occasional ·  incessant ·  ceaseless ·  rhythmic ·  faint ·  momentary ·  sporadic ·  spasmodic ·  muffle ·  periodic ·  desultory
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = French intermittent = Spanish intermitente = Portuguese Italian intermittente, from Latin intermitten(t-)s, present participle of intermittere, leave off, cease, pause: see intermit.
 

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/ɪntərˈmɪtənt/
by American Heritage

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