intermit

English

Etymology

From Latin intermittere, from inter- + mittere.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪntəˈmɪt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪntɚˈmɪt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪt

Verb

intermit (third-person singular simple present intermits, present participle intermitting, simple past and past participle intermitted)

1. (transitive, now rare) To interrupt, to stop or cease temporarily or periodically; to suspend.
   • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     Pray to the gods to intermit the plague.

   • 1624, John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII., in The Works of John Donne, vol. 3, ed. Henry Alford, London: John W. Parker (1839), pp. 574-5:

     The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.

   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], chapter I, in The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, page 243:

     Idleness […] of body is nothing but a kind of benumbing laziness, intermitting exercise, which, if we may believe Fernelius, “[…] makes them unapt to do anything whatever.”

Derived terms

• intermittence
• intermittency
• intermittent

Related terms

• intermission
• mission