Sporadic

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Sporadic \Spo*rad"ic\ (-r[a^]d"[i^]k), a. [Gr. ? scattered, fr.
     ?, ?, scattered, fr. ? to sow seed, to scatter like seed: cf.
     F. sporadique. See {Spore}.]
     Occurring singly, or apart from other things of the same
     kind, or in scattered instances; separate; single; as, a
     sporadic fireball; a sporadic case of disease; a sporadic


     example of a flower.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Sporadic disease} (Med.), a disease which occurs in single
        and scattered cases. See the Note under {Endemic}, a.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  sporadic
       adj : recurring in scattered and irregular or unpredictable
             instances; "a city subjected to sporadic bombing raids"
             [ant: {continual}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  165 Moby Thesaurus words for "sporadic":
     aimless, amorphous, broadcast, broken, capricious, careening,
     casual, catching, catchy, chance, changeable, changing, choppy,
     communicable, contagious, desultory, deviating, deviative,
     deviatory, different, diffuse, disarticulated, disconnected,
     discontinuous, discrete, disjunct, disordered, disorderly,
     dispersed, dispread, disproportionate, disseminated, dissipated,
     distributed, divaricate, divergent, diversified, diversiform,
     eccentric, endemic, epidemial, epidemic, epiphytotic, epizootic,
     erose, erratic, few, fitful, flickering, fluctuating, formless,
     frivolous, gratuitous, guttering, halting, haphazard, herky-jerky,
     heteroclite, hit-or-miss, immethodical, impulsive, inchoate,
     incoherent, inconsistent, inconstant, indiscriminate, infectious,
     infective, inoculable, intermittent, intermitting, irregular,
     jagged, jerky, lurching, meaningless, mercurial, misshapen, motley,
     mutable, nonconformist, nonstandard, nonsymmetrical, nonsystematic,
     nonuniform, occasional, on-again-off-again, orderless, pandemic,
     patchy, periodical, pestiferous, pestilential, planless,
     pluralistic, promiscuous, ragged, rambling, random, rare, rough,
     scarce, scattered, scrappy, seldom, senseless, separate, shapeless,
     single, snatchy, sparse, spasmatic, spasmic, spasmodic,
     spasmodical, spastic, spotty, spread, spreading, staggering,
     straggling, straggly, strewn, strown, systemless, taking,
     unarranged, uncertain, unclassified, uncommon, undirected,
     unequable, unequal, uneven, unexpected, unfrequent, ungraded,
     unjoined, unmethodical, unmetrical, unordered, unorganized,
     unorthodox, unregular, unrhythmical, unsettled, unsorted, unstable,
     unsteady, unsymmetrical, unsystematic, ununiform, vague, variable,
     variegated, variform, various, varying, veering, wandering,
     wavering, widespread, wobbling, wobbly, zymotic