Crossword clues for fitful
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fitful \Fit"ful\, a. [From 7th Fit.] Full of fits; irregularly variable; impulsive and unstable.
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
--Shak.
-- Fit"ful*ly, adv. -- Fit"ful*ness, n.
The victorious trumpet peal
Dies fitfully away.
--Macaulay.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
used once by Shakespeare ("Life's fitful fever," "Macbeth," 1605) in sense of "characterized by fits," from fit (n.2) + -ful. then Revived in Romantic poetry late 18c. with a sense of "shifting, changing." Related: Fitfully (1792); fitfulness.
Wiktionary
a. irregular; unsteady; characterized by fits.
WordNet
adj. occurring in spells and often abruptly; "fitful bursts of energy"; "spasmodic rifle fire" [syn: spasmodic]
intermittently stopping and starting; "fitful (or interrupted) sleep"; "off-and-on static" [syn: interrupted, off-and-on(a)]
Usage examples of "fitful".
The breeze was coming in fitful gusts, sending the biplane first to one side and then to the other.
In a fitful manner the Vicar would give young Caddles private tuition.
At moments the fitful rays fall upon bearers carrying a coffinless body rolled in a blanket, with a military cloak roughly thrown over by way of pall.
Exhausted, Goodtree fell into a fitful sleep in which her unconscious replayed all the incidents of her cubhood with implacable clarity.
It was nearly noon when Myles was awakened from a fitful sleep by Gascoyne bringing in his dinner, but, as might be supposed, he had but little hunger, and ate sparingly.
Far in the night, Lemmon stiffened to attention, waking Seleva from a fitful sleep.
In time her voice trailed away, the sobbing lessened, and she sank into fitful sleep.
Miss Mahan reached school the next morning, but still blew in fitful gusts.
In the precision of harmonic structure, he hears his own conviction that the coding problem rests on a simple look-up tableat ever lower levels, a mechanism to explain cell growth, viral piracy, symbiotic coalition government of organs, the origin of species, phone impulses broken off in panic, inexplicable behavior late in the year, fitful inspiration, the continuous cold modal rapture in chords, in vivo.
Languorous recollections, duskiness, fitful gleams, saporous church air and pins and needles in the legs.
By nightfall it was completed, and by the fitful firelight Tenas painted and stained its huddled figures in the black, orange, crimson and green that tribal custom made law.
Kushtaka, the twins, Tikka and Sky, Mraka and Puk, surveyed the fitful seas topside while all around them business went on as calmly and matter-of-factly as usual.
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead In horror pause on the fitful gale.
And thinking thus, he needs must cast his eye On rusty mail, on battered shoon, and sigh, And murmur fitful curses and lament That in such base, unknightly garb he went-- A lord of might whose broad shield bravely bore Of proud and noble quarterings a score.
The same fitful breeze which had carried it from the sea beyond, moved the vapory shroud across the scene in ghostly patterns: here and again clearing an open stage, only to wrap it once more in its cloak of white invisibility.