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CONTINUAL
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Recurring regularly or frequently in a prolonged and closely spaced series
Example:
the continual banging of the shutters
Classified under:
Similar:
insistent; repetitive (repetitive and persistent)
running (continually repeated over a period of time)
perennial; recurrent; repeated (recurring again and again)
persistent; relentless; unrelenting (never-ceasing)
recurring; revenant (coming back)
Antonym:
sporadic (recurring in scattered and irregular or unpredictable instances)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Having no interruptions
Example:
'continual' is often used interchangeably with 'continuous'
Classified under:
Similar:
continuous; uninterrupted (continuing in time or space without interruption)
Context examples:
Well, then, he said, I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Maintaining the integrity of the gastrointestinal tract despite the continual presence of microbial flora and injurious agents is essential.
(Mucosal Healing Pathway, NCI Thesaurus/BIOCARTA)
His broad, brown face was lighted up by a continual smile, and he looked slowly from side to side with eyes which twinkled and shone with delight.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute’s peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
The cold evening breeze, of which I have spoken, whistled through every chink of the rude building and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine sand.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
There was continual bickering and jangling.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
His anxiety for her comfort—his continual solicitations that she would eat, and his often-expressed fears of her seeing nothing to her taste—though never in her life before had she beheld half such variety on a breakfast-table—made it impossible for her to forget for a moment that she was a visitor.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
I may mention that our aneroid shows us that in the continual incline which we have ascended since we abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet above sea-level.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
