Continual vs continuous
Continual means happening again and again, with short breaks in between. Continuous means going on without any stop or break at all.
continuOUS ends in OUS: One Unbroken Stretch.
continual adjective
Happening again and again, often and with only short breaks.
- The bridge has needed continual patching since the day it opened.
- I am tired of his continual complaints about the food.
continuous adjective
Going on and on without stopping or breaking.
- The factory runs on a continuous cycle and never shuts down.
- We heard a continuous hum from the fridge all night.
Watch out
- Continual is also used to mean without any stop, like continuous, and dictionaries record this. But many usage guides keep the two apart, so in careful writing use continuous there.
- Continuous also means joined in one piece with no gaps, and in grammar it names a verb form for an ongoing action.The present continuous appears constantly in everyday spoken English.
Test yourself
The baby's blank waking every hour left her parents exhausted.
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continual. The waking happens again and again, with breaks between, so continual.
The river makes a blank sound that never stops.
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continuous. The sound has no break at all, so continuous.
Heavy rain fell in a blank stream for six hours.
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continuous. The rain did not stop at any point, so continuous.
The office printer needs blank repairs because it keeps breaking down.
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continual. The repairs happen over and over, so continual.
Full entries: continualcontinuous