sporadic

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: spo=rad=ic

CIDE DICTIONARY

sporadic, a. [Gr. scattered, fr. , , scattered, fr. to sow seed, to scatter like seed: cf. F. sporadique. See Spore.].

 Occurring singly, or apart from other things of the same kind, or in scattered instances; separate; single; as, a sporadic fireball; a sporadic case of disease; a sporadic example of a flower.  [1913 Webster]

Sporadic disease (Med.), a disease which occurs in single and scattered cases. See the Note under Endemic, a.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

sporadic, adj. occurring only here and there or occasionally, separate, scattered.

Derivative

sporadically adv.

Etymology

med.L sporadicus f. Gk sporadikos f. sporas -ados scattered: cf. speiro to sow

THESAURUS

sporadic

aimless, amorphous, broadcast, broken, capricious, careening, casual, catching, catchy, chance, changeable, changing, choppy, communicable, contagious, desultory, deviating, deviative, deviatory, different, diffuse, disarticulated, disconnected, discontinuous, discrete, disjunct, disordered, disorderly, dispersed, dispread, disproportionate, disseminated, dissipated, distributed, divaricate, divergent, diversified, diversiform, eccentric, endemic, epidemial, epidemic, epiphytotic, epizootic, erose, erratic, few, fitful, flickering, fluctuating, formless, frivolous, gratuitous, guttering, halting, haphazard, herky-jerky, heteroclite, hit-or-miss, immethodical, impulsive, inchoate, incoherent, inconsistent, inconstant, indiscriminate, infectious, infective, inoculable, intermittent, intermitting, irregular, jagged, jerky, lurching, meaningless, mercurial, misshapen, motley, mutable, nonconformist, nonstandard, nonsymmetrical, nonsystematic, nonuniform, occasional, on-again-off-again, orderless, pandemic, patchy, periodical, pestiferous, pestilential, planless, pluralistic, promiscuous, ragged, rambling, random, rare, rough, scarce, scattered, scrappy, seldom, senseless, separate, shapeless, single, snatchy, sparse, spasmatic, spasmic, spasmodic, spasmodical, spastic, spotty, spread, spreading, staggering, straggling, straggly, strewn, strown, systemless, taking, unarranged, uncertain, unclassified, uncommon, undirected, unequable, unequal, uneven, unexpected, unfrequent, ungraded, unjoined, unmethodical, unmetrical, unordered, unorganized, unorthodox, unregular, unrhythmical, unsettled, unsorted, unstable, unsteady, unsymmetrical, unsystematic, ununiform, vague, variable, variegated, variform, various, varying, veering, wandering, wavering, widespread, wobbling, wobbly, zymotic

ROGET THESAURUS

sporadic

Dispersion

N nonassemblage, dispersion, dispersion, disjunction, divergence, aspersion, scattering, dissemination, diffusion, dissipation, distribution, apportionment, spread, respersion, circumfusion, interspersion, spargefaction, affusion, waifs and estrays, flotsam and jetsam, disjecta membra waveson, unassembled &c (assemble), dispersed, sparse, dispread, broadcast, sporadic, widespread, epidemic, adrift, stray, disheveled, streaming, sparsim, here and there, passim.