1 happening or existing for a period of time without interruption:
Recovery after the accident will be a continuous process that may take several months. * Stop smoking and you will see a continuous improvement in your health. * She was in continuous employment until the age of sixty-five. * The rain has been continuous since this morning.
2 spreading in a line or over an area without any spaces:
a continuous line of traffic * Rain was falling outside in a continuous silver curtain.
3 (informal) repeated many times
SYNCONTINUAL:
For four days the town suffered continuous attacks.
HELPNOTE Continual is much more frequent in this meaning.
4 (grammar) = PROGRESSIVE:
the continuous tenses
continuously adverb:
He has lived and worked in France almost continuously since 1961. * the continuously changing situation * Heat the mixture until thickened, stirring continuously.
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WHICHWORD?
continuous / continual
These adjectives are frequently used with the following nouns:
continuous ~ continual ~
process change
employment problems
flow updating
line questions
speech pain
supply fear
Continuous describes something that continues without stopping.
Continual usually describes an action that is repeated again and again.
The difference between these two words is now disappearing. In particular, continual can also mean the same as continuous and is used especially about undesirable things: Life was a continual struggle for them. However, continuous is much more frequent in this sense.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of continuous come from?
This entry for continuous is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is continuous a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, continuous is tagged as adjective.
Does continuous appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — continuous appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
