# continuous

Pronunciation: say "kuhn-TIN-yoo-uhs" /kənˈtɪn.juː.əs/

## Adjective

1. Happening or continuing without any stop, break, or interruption.
   - Simple: Going on and on without stopping or breaking.
   - _The factory runs on a continuous cycle and never shuts down._
   - _She felt a continuous ache in her shoulder for several weeks._
2. Forming an unbroken whole, with no intervening gaps or empty spaces.
   - Simple: Joined together in one piece, with no gaps or empty spaces.
   - _The mountains stretched in a continuous ridge along the horizon._
   - _Workers poured a continuous slab of concrete for the foundation._
3. In grammar, describing a verb form that expresses an action or state as ongoing.
   - Simple: In grammar, describing a verb form that shows an action is still going on.
   - _The present continuous appears constantly in everyday spoken English._
   - _Teachers explain the continuous aspect by comparing 'she works' with 'she is working'._
4. In biology, uniform throughout and unbroken, without joints, divisions, or articulations.
   - Simple: In biology, smooth and even all over, with no breaks or joints.
   - _Botanists described the leaf margin as continuous, lacking any teeth or lobes._
   - _The outer layer of the specimen was continuous, without cracks or segments._
5. In mathematics, describing a function with no sudden jumps, where small changes in the input produce only small changes in the output.
   - Simple: In math, describing a line or function with no sudden jumps or breaks.
   - _The function is continuous across its whole domain, with no breaks or jumps._
   - _Engineers assumed the temperature changed in a continuous way along the rod._
6. In mathematics, describing a function between spaces for which the preimage of every open set in the target is open in the domain.
   - Simple: In math, describing a function that does not break or tear a shape apart.
   - _Topologists check that a function is continuous by examining preimages of open sets._
   - _A continuous bijection whose inverse is also continuous is called a homeomorphism._

## Origin

From Latin continuus, derived from contineō ("hold together"). It displaced the native Old English word singal.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/continuous (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).