1 a period of time between two events:
The interval between major earthquakes might be 200 years. * He knocked on the door and after a brief interval it was opened.
2 (BrE) (also intermission AmE, BrE) a short period of time separating parts of a play, film/movie or concert:
There will be an interval of 20 minutes after the second act. -< BREAK
3 [usuallypl.] a short period during which sth different happens from what is happening the rest of the time:
She's delirious, but has lucid intervals. * (BrE) The day should be mainly dry with sunny intervals.
4 (music) a difference in PITCH (= how high or low a note sounds) between two notes:
an interval of one octave
IDIOMS
at (...) intervals
1 with time between:
Buses to the city leave at regular intervals. * The runners started at 5-minute intervals.
2 with spaces between:
Flaming torches were positioned at intervals along the terrace.
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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.
This entry for interval is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is interval a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, interval is tagged as noun.
Does interval appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — interval 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.