English Café: Intermittent and Intermittently

Advanced Details: Intermittent and Intermittently

Intermittent means coming and going at intervals; that is, it is not continuous. Something that is intermittent happens occasionally rather than continuously. For example:

• After three hours of intermittent rain, the football game was abandoned. 
• Negotiations and talks between the lawyers went on intermittently for three years.
• The hospital patient was having intermittent pains in his side.
• On the TV news today, there were reports of intermittent [= sporadic] fighting along the border.

We have an intermittent problem with the system, i.e., the problem is not happening regularly or continuously. Rather, it is stopping and starting repeatedly or with long periods in between.