# intermittent
## English
### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˌɪntəˈmɪtn̩t/
* (US) IPA: /ˌɪntɚˈmɪtn̩t/
* Audio (US):(file)

### Adjective

intermittent (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, 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.
* (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

* Charcot intermittent fever
* Charcot's intermittent fever
* intermittent explosive disorder
* intermittent fasting
* intermittent lake
* intermittently
* intermittentness
* nonintermittent
* unintermittent

#### Related terms

* inter
* inter-
* intermit
* intermittence
* intermittency

#### Translations
### Noun

intermittent (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, 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.

## French
### Etymology

From Latin intermittentem.

### Pronunciation

* Audio (Canada):(file)

### Adjective

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

#### Derived terms

* intermittemment

### Further reading

* “intermittent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

## Latin
### Verb

intermittent
* third-person plural future active indicative of intermittō