Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Occurring at irregular intervals; having no pattern or order in time. See Synonyms at periodic.
- adj. Appearing singly or at widely scattered localities, as a plant or disease.
- adj. Isolated; unique: a sporadic example.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Separate; single; scattered; occurring singly, or apart from other things of the same kind; widely or irregularly scattered; of exceptional occurrence (in a given locality); straggling.
- In phytogeography, distributed in several regions: so used specifically by A. P. de Candolle (French sporadique), in contrast with endemic, of plant genera whose species are thus distributed. Compare polydemic.
Wiktionary
- adj. Rare and scattered in occurrence.
- adj. Exhibiting random behavior; patternless.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Occurring singly, or apart from other things of the same kind, or in scattered instances; separate; single.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. recurring in scattered and irregular or unpredictable instances
Etymologies
- Medieval Latin sporadicus, scattered, from Greek sporadikos, from sporas, sporad-; see sper- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“They've done a good job in reaching out to what we call sporadic voters.”
“And so I think it's a whole new paradigm for pollsters right now, because they're not sure how to reach these new voters and what they call sporadic voters, which the Obama campaign really thinks they're getting to.”
“But the forward element of the 1st Battalion 7th Marines has pushed into this troubled area and they have reported what they call sporadic fighting that has been taking place up there.”
“Guards at the U.N. compound and Afghan policemen who responded to the site engaged in sporadic gun fights with the three attackers, who were killed by Afghan security forces.”
The Huffington Post: Suicide Bombers Attack UN Compound In Afghanistan
“And so -- yeah, we met [at the Republican National Convention] and kind of kept in sporadic touch and then met up Christmas last year.”
The Washington Post: 'Daily Show's' John Oliver engaged to Kate Norley
“He attempted occasional comebacks, but the last 40 years of his career were spent in sporadic engagements in Las Vegas and in second-tier concert halls.”
The Washington Post: Eddie Fisher dies at 82; 1950s singing star brought low by scandalous love life
“He was lying on his side taking in his breath in short sporadic heaves.”
“Most narcolepsy is sporadic, which is to say that the condition is not a straightforward inherited trait.”
“However, inherited cancers are very important as it appears that the genes responsible for, hereditary cancer maybe the same as those involved in sporadic malignancies.”
“On the righthand side of your screen, you are seeing a live picture from Umm Qasr, where for three hours or plus, plus or minus a few minutes, Marines have been trying to deal with a situation of what they are often terming sporadic resistance.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sporadic’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Time
clock, forever, never, ever, ago, when, then, now, past, present, future, timeline and 119 more...
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week 2
deft, clad, innuendo, erroneous, vehement, impetuous, vacuous, corpulent, provincial, din, fluctuate, sporadic and 8 more...
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faith79's list
ravendesk Thanks! I remember that word now. Not sure where I discovered it originally though. Sep 20, 2011
Dan337 Words that represent “the sound of the thing signified” are onomatopoeic (or, if you prefer, onomatopœic or onomatopoetic); the property itself (as well as its use) is called onomatopoeia. (Wordnik is crawling with lists of examples.) Sep 20, 2011
ravendesk This is a delightful example of a word that sounds exactly like what it means, and both the sound and meaning intrigue me. I bet there is even a word for "a word that sounds like what it means"...is there? Sep 19, 2011