Sporadic

How to spell sporadic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sporadic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sporadic mean?

1. adjectiveOccurring at scattered, irregular intervals rather than steadily or continuously.

Sporadic in a sentence

• The village gets only sporadic mobile coverage in bad weather.

• His attendance at the evening classes was sporadic at best.

Where does sporadic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek sporadikos, meaning 'scattered' or 'dispersed', which was built on sporas (genitive sporados), an adjective describing things strewn about here and there. That root belongs to the same family as the verb speirein, meaning 'to sow', so the original image is of seed flung across a field and landing in no particular pattern. The same sowing root gives English the words 'spore' and 'diaspora', the latter literally a 'scattering' of people. English took 'sporadic' in the seventeenth century, partly through scientific and medical Latin, where it described diseases that appeared in isolated cases rather than spreading as an epidemic. From that technical use it broadened into the everyday sense of anything happening at irregular, scattered intervals, and the single central 'r' and the plain '-ic' ending keep the spelling close to its Greek source.

How the word is built

• sporad- (from Greek sporas, genitive sporados: scattered, dispersed)
• -ic (adjective suffix)