Definition of "intermittent"
adjective
comparative more intermittent, superlative most intermittent
(medicine, dated) An intermittent fever or disease.
Quotations
Feuers, and especially those that are called intermittents, discontinuing agues, euen naturally at the beginning and their first inuasion, cause vomits: and at the declining, sweats.
1592, Nicholas Gyer, chapter 16, in The English Phlebotomy: or, Method and Way of Healing by Letting of Blood, London: Andrew Mansell, page 172
In disease, the agency of this system of vessels is an object of attentive study with the pathologist. To its influence in inflammation, we have already alluded; but it is no less exemplified in the more general diseases of the frame, as in the cold, hot, and sweating stages of an intermittent.
1832, Robley Dunglison, “Circulation”, in Human Physiology, volume 2, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, page 146