The Collaborative International Dictionary
Intermittent \In`ter*mit"tent\, a. [L. intermittens, -entis, p.
pr. of intermittere: cf. F. intermittent.]
Coming and going at intervals; alternating; recurrent;
periodic; as, an intermittent fever.
--Boyle.
Intermittent fever (Med.), a disease with fever which recurs at certain intervals; -- applied particularly to fever and ague. See Fever.
Intermittent gearing (Mach.), gearing which receives, or produces, intermittent motion.
Intermittent springs, springs which flow at intervals, not apparently dependent upon rain or drought. They probably owe their intermittent action to their being connected with natural reservoirs in hills or mountains by passages having the form of a siphon, the water beginning to flow when it has accumulated so as to fill the upper part of the siphon, and ceasing when, by running through it, it has fallen below the orifice of the upper part of the siphon in the reservoir.
Usage examples of "intermittent fever".
Humans somehow catch it from infected stock, and either die or slowly recover from an intermittent fever a lot like the one we've been having up this way.
It has been much esteemed as a popular febrifuge, especially in intermittent fever, and has been employed, though less successfully, in typhoid and yellow fevers.
Gentian with equal parts of Tormentil or galls has been used with success for curing intermittent fever.
The restlessness of the born traveller, the craving for the large and lonely spaces in the outlandish corners of the world, the incurable intermittent fever to be moving, ever moving amongst strange peoples and under strange skies—.