intermittent

Etymology

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

adj

1. Stopping and starting, occurring, or presenting at intervals; coming after a particular time span.
   The day was cloudy with intermittent rain.
   Intermittent bugs are most difficult to reproduce.
   Also bloudletting is good in feuers, whether they be continual or intermittent […] 1564, Philip Moore, chapter 13, in The Hope of Health, London
   […] 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. 1698, Robert South, Twelve Sermons upon Several Subjects and Occasions, volume 3, London: Thomas Bennet, page 511
   […] Pale through night’s curtain gleam’d By fits the lunar intermittent ray, 1792, Richard Cumberland, Calvary: or The Death of Christ, London: C. Dilly, Book 5, lines 364-366, p. 164
   […] 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 […] 1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 20, in Lud-in-the-Mist, London: Millenium, published 2000, page 193
   […] three scruffy-looking young men with intermittent facial hair and starvation-symptom physiques. 2015, John Irving, chapter 18, in Avenue of Mysteries, New York: Simon and Schuster, page 238
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.

noun

1. (medicine, dated) An intermittent fever or disease.
   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. 1592, Nicholas Gyer, chapter 16, in The English Phlebotomy: or, Method and Way of Healing by Letting of Blood, London: Andrew Mansell, page 172
   The Bark, which had been ineffectual in the Intermittents of the former Year, was successful in this. 1733, John Arbuthnot, chapter 6, in An Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies, London: J. Tonson, page 144
   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. 1832, Robley Dunglison, “Circulation”, in Human Physiology, volume 2, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, page 146