occasional

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: oc=ca=sion=al

CIDE DICTIONARY

occasional, a. [Cf. F. occasionnel.].

•  Occuring at times, but not constant, regular, or systematic; made or happening as opportunity requires or admits; casual; incidental; as, occasional remarks, or efforts.  [1913 Webster]

  "The . . . occasional writing of the present times."  [1913 Webster]
•  Produced by accident; as, the occasional origin of a thing.  Sir T. Browne.  [1913 Webster]
•  Of or pertaining to an occasion or to occasions; intended for a specific occasion; for use only when needed, and not regularly.  [PJC]

Occasional cause (Metaph.), some circumstance preceding an effect which, without being the real cause, becomes the occasion of the action of the efficient cause; thus, the act of touching gunpowder with fire is the occasional, but not the efficient, cause of an explosion.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

occasional, adj.
1 happening irregularly and infrequently.
2 made or meant for, or associated with, a special occasion.
3 acting on a special occasion.

Idiom

occasional cause a secondary cause; an occasion (see OCCASION n. 4). occasional table a small table for irregular and varied use.

Derivative

occasionality n. occasionally adv.

DEVIL DICTIONARY

occasional

adj. Afflicting us with greater or less frequency. That, however, is not the sense in which the word is used in the phrase "occasional verses," which are verses written for an "occasion," such as an anniversary, a celebration or other event. True, they afflict us a little worse than other sorts of verse, but their name has no reference to irregular recurrence.

THESAURUS

occasional

accessory, accidental, accompanying, additional, ado, adventitious, afloat, afoot, aleatory, auxiliary, behind the scenes, by-the-way, casual, causal, causative, ceremonial, circumstantial, conditional, constitutive, contingent, current, decisive, determinative, doing, effectual, etiological, eventuating, extra, few, formative, going on, happening, in hand, in the wind, incidental, inessential, infrequent, institutive, intermittent, irregular, nonessential, occurring, odd, off, on, on foot, ongoing, originative, out-of-the-way, parenthetical, part-time, particular, passing, periodic, pivotal, prevailing, prevalent, provisional, random, rare, resultant, ritual, scarce, seldom, side, spare, special, sporadic, supplementary, taking place, uncommon, under way, unessential, unfrequent

ROGET THESAURUS

occasional

Discontinuity

N discontinuity, disjunction, anacoluthon, interruption, break, fracture, flaw, fault, crack, cut, gap, solution of continuity, caesura, broken thread, parenthesis, episode, rhapsody, patchwork, intermission, alternation, dropping fire, discontinuous, unsuccessive, broken, interrupted, dicousu, disconnected, unconnected, discrete, disjunctive, fitful, spasmodic, desultory, intermitting, occasional, intermittent, alternate, recurrent, at intervals, by snatches, by jerks, by skips, by catches, by fits and starts, skippingly, per saltum, longo intervallo, like 'angel visits few and far between'.

Uncertainty

N uncertainty, incertitude, doubt, doubtfulness, dubiety, dubitation, dubitancy, dubitousness, hesitation, suspense, perplexity, embarrassment, dilemma, bewilderment, timidity, vacillation, diaporesis, indetermination, vagueness, haze, fog, obscurity, ambiguity, contingency, dependence, dependency, double contingency, possibility upon a possibility, open question, onus probandi, blind bargain, pig in a poke, leap in the dark, something or other, needle in a haystack, needle in a bottle of hay, roving commission, precariousness, fallibility, uncertain, casual, random, changeable, doubtful, dubious, indecisive, unsettled, undecided, undetermined, in suspense, open to discussion, controvertible, in question, vague, indeterminate, indefinite, ambiguous, equivocal, undefined, undefinable, confused, mystic, oracular, dazed, perplexing, enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical, experimental, unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable), fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable, unreliable, untrustworthy, contingent, contingent on, dependent on, subject to, dependent on circumstances, occasional, provisional, unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative, unascertained, unconfirmed, undemonstrated, untold, uncounted, in a state of uncertainty, in a cloud, in a maze, bushed, off the track, ignorant, afraid to say, out of one's reckoning, astray, adrift, at sea, at fault, at a loss, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus, puzzled, lost, abroad, d_esorient_e, distracted, distraught, pendente lite, sub spe rati, Heaven knows, who can tell? who shall decide when doctors disagr.