What is another word for fitfully?

Pronunciation: [fˈɪtfəlɪ] (IPA)

Fitfully is a common adverb used to describe something incomplete or irregular, often manifesting in short bursts or intervals. Some synonyms for fitfully include sporadically, erratically, intermittently, on-and-off, patchily, off-and-on, and unevenly. Another synonym that depicts the unpredictable, infrequent nature of fitfully is intermittently. Erratically describes something that occurs in an unpredictable or chaotic pattern, while sporadically refers to something that occurs only from time to time. Patchily implies that something is incomplete, with areas missing, while unevenly suggests that something is rough or inconsistent. Overall, these synonyms provide different ways to describe the irregular, inconsistent nature of the word fitfully.

Synonyms for Fitfully:

What are the hypernyms for Fitfully?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

Usage examples for Fitfully

We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone.
"Afoot in England"
W.H. Hudson
I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, and I sat listening fitfully to the other men's gossip.
"To-morrow?"
Victoria Cross
A lantern, in which the flame blew fitfully, was set on the huge heap of mould and sent an uncertain light over the grave.
"To-morrow?"
Victoria Cross

Famous quotes with Fitfully

  • We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
    Alfred North Whitehead
  • Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. […] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.
    Stephen Jay Gould
  • In the writings of such "pagan" philosophers as Plutarch and Porphyry we find a humanitarian ethic of the most exalted kind, which, after undergoing a long repression during medieval churchdom, reappeared, albeit but weakly and fitfully at first, in the literature of the Renaissance, to be traced more definitely in the eighteenth century school of "sensibility." But it was not until after the age of Rousseau, from which must be dated the great humanitarian movement of the past century, that Vegetarianism began to assert itself as a system, a reasoned plea for the disuse of flesh-food.
    Henry Stephens Salt
  • On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational — to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.
    Martin Amis
  • When someone from Skagafjörður was settled comfortably against our gable-wall and was launched on to the Úlfar- set to a Skagafjörður chant, with that obligatory opening about King Cyrus, there opened up before us a whole wide world of heroic poetry all the way to the Orient, fitfully lit by strange flashes of illumination.
    Halldór Laxness

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