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sporadic
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  • Although the castle was property of the Vatican, it was used only sporadically, and Bernini had made numerous renovations to it over the years.†   (source)
  • He tries to imagine their descent, sporadic and muted lights passing and receding, cables rattling, everyone quiet, sinking down to that permanent darkness where men claw at the earth with a half mile of rock hunched on top of them.†   (source)
  • Only this time it's not the sporadic pop-pop of some desperate refugee firing at shadows, but big guns that go off with an eardrum-thumping pub-DOOM.†   (source)
  • He's kissing me, sporadically muttering into my mouth.†   (source)
  • Sporadic brown circles — widely spaced, big as dimes—began to pop up on the pavement.†   (source)
  • Thus on the morning of our summit bid, the only ropes strung along the precipitous serrations of the upper Southeast Ridge were a few ancient, tattered remnants from past expeditions that emerged sporadically from the ice.†   (source)
  • Only sporadic cases of detachment—but every medical procedure carries a certain risk.†   (source)
  • Fines on businesses and raids by immigration enforcement agents have gone from sporadic to virtually nil.†   (source)
  • Fighting was sporadic, at least initially.†   (source)
  • Wind blew through the desolate town, and dust devils swirled sporadically.†   (source)
  • Most firefights in Iraq were sporadic.†   (source)
  • For the most part the woods are dense aside from sporadic clearings we continually stumble upon.†   (source)
  • Although I admit in my first week in Iraq we were subject to… well… a minor lapse in judgment after we found an Iraqi insurgent ammunition dump during a patrol along a river as sporadic shots were fired at us from the other side.†   (source)
  • They had lingered at the edges of the parking lot while the cars arrived sporadically during the half hour before the wedding was scheduled to begin.†   (source)
  • The distant boom of artillery switched from its sporadic night rhythm to the purposeful daylight pounding.†   (source)
  • Once there had been bitter disputes, the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire.†   (source)
  • The rain continued sporadically, so that by Wednesday the creek had swollen to the trunk of the crab apple and they were running through ankle-deep water to make their flight into Terabithia.†   (source)
  • So I suppose you could say that I've known him for nearly five hundred years though our encounters have been somewhat sporadic over the past few decades.†   (source)
  • One contained nothing but a boiling grey smoke that flickered sporadically.†   (source)
  • Amy and I had sex sporadically enough it was possible.†   (source)
  • A few wind-whipped and decrepit Victorian mansions, remnants of a lost era of seagoing optimism, loomed out of the snowfall on the town's sporadic hills.†   (source)
  • As they approached the outskirts of the town they heard a few sporadic shots.†   (source)
  • His father prayed mainly on Fridays, under normal circumstances, and only sporadically during the week.†   (source)
  • Sporadic possession maybe, which is bad enough.†   (source)
  • He was curing most of the cases that appeared sporadically in Cange when, in 1995, mdr claimed a close friend who had been living in a shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, Peru.†   (source)
  • The date book also had a large section for a diary, but Harriet used the diary only sporadically.†   (source)
  • On the whole, the prisoner ignores his guardians and their sporadic attempts to goad him by repeating parts of Hickock's hour-long tape-recorded confession: "He says he tried to stop you, Perry.†   (source)
  • Perhaps, I thought, he was as confused and disoriented as I. He made sporadic attempts to help me adjust.†   (source)
  • She finished her first number and the applause was stunned and sporadic.†   (source)
  • Surveillance in the courtyard had become careless and sporadic.†   (source)
  • Heat lightning flickered sporadically, tattooing crazy shadows in there.†   (source)
  • The lesions by this time were showing a pattern of marked splenomegaly [swollen spleen]—strikingly thy on cut surface, enlarged kidneys, and sporadic occurrences of hemorrhage in a variety of organs….†   (source)
  • He wrote home sporadically.†   (source)
  • The spring weather was still sporadic—cold and dismal one day, perfectly warm the next.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, news about him was slowly becoming so uncertain, and the letters from the wise man so sporadic and melancholy, that Aureliano grew to think about them as Amaranta Ursula thought about her husband, and both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday and eternal reality was love.†   (source)
  • Over and over I tried to force the nebulous shield outside of myself, with only faint, sporadic success.†   (source)
  • Probably shot in the midthirties, sporadically and in secret, during a period of acute depression for Eisenstein.†   (source)
  • The screams didn't stop, just became more hitched and sporadic as he sucked in breaths and struggled to break free.†   (source)
  • We sped forward, meeting sporadic fire.†   (source)
  • On their right were a few sporadic buildings whose roofs they could literally step onto, as the slope continued dropping off steeply into farming terraces, all the way to the valley floor a quarter mile below.†   (source)
  • It drizzled sporadically for the entire time we were in London but when the sun peeped out it was gloriously beautiful.†   (source)
  • In California he could look forward to only sporadic nursing work, and most of his possessions fit in the trunk of "La Bamba," the burgundy gas-guzzling Buick that was as close as he had to a home.†   (source)
  • As the day progressed, sporadic firefights broke out around the volcano's base on the west side.†   (source)
  • My sporadic journal of those years is full of them.†   (source)
  • Over the course of the next few years Esteban Trueba kept abreast of the black sheep of the family through Blan-ca s sporadic correspondence with him.†   (source)
  • The phones had stopped working when the bombs fell, and ever since, they had only worked sporadically.†   (source)
  • The war in Israel continued sporadically, especially in the Negev.†   (source)
  • What trouble we'd run into, I and my lieutenants, had been sporadic.†   (source)
  • Both sides staged sporadic night raids on the other's lines, or launched forays to capture hay and livestock from nearby harbor islands.†   (source)
  • Closer inspection revealed a sporadic welling of tears in his eyes that he promptly wiped away so she could not see them.†   (source)
  • Neither bird nor animal spoke and the only sound was the sporadic soft thud of snow from overladen boughs.†   (source)
  • Over the years, her son had written her only sporadically, quick notes jotted down, it seemed to Celia, between his lectures.†   (source)
  • The night she died, Joe sat at her bedside in the hospital, holding her hand, putting cold compresses on her brow, and slipping slivers of ice into her parched mouth when she asked for them, while she spoke sporadically, half coherently, about a Knights of Columbus dinner dance to which Frank had taken her when Joe was only two, the year before the accident and amputation.†   (source)
  • Every Sunday morning we were all there, and the other times were a bit more sporadic, weaving things in with the pretty regular schedule of sports, which was often easier said than done.†   (source)
  • The showers were sporadic, but whenever the clouds parted, the moonlight revealed a potentially lethal minefield of watery slicks and icy stone.†   (source)
  • The only family member I was talking to was Hollis, but even our contact was sporadic at best, if only because he was so caught up in his new life with Laura.†   (source)
  • Before that, your effort was sporadic at best.†   (source)
  • Unlike Thomas, who seemed to have an awareness of both worlds at all times, her and Monique's connection was apparently sporadic and depended on Thomas.†   (source)
  • The fighting grew sporadic and passionless.†   (source)
  • Even the thought of this makes my heart leap and hurdle, and I can say once and for all that if a guarantor came forward and promised their lives would be good and full and only sporadically miserable in exchange for mine, I'd tie a twenty-five-pound bag of driveway salt onto each of my wrists and ankles and fall one last time into the pool.†   (source)
  • The sky was dark gray with solid cloud and sporadic rain.†   (source)
  • What other middle-class American teenager lived the way he did—flitting around the country like a vagrant, completely out of his parents' control, getting in touch just sporadically and neglecting whenever possible to give them any means of getting in touch with him?†   (source)
  • Smoldering ruins and the sporadic whistle of artillery greeted the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Corps of the Union army.†   (source)
  • Teaching might be the tip of a bull's horn, his father's idea, and nothing he was good at, but he sporadically recalled what it was like not to have any degree, and that gave him pause.†   (source)
  • In an effort to bring the Peace Talks to a higher level of dialogue, the Secretary of Defense has ordered the number of B-52 missions over the North be dropped from 1,800 to 1,600 a month; meanwhile, in the South, it was a quiet week, with sporadic and light action confined to the Central Highlands and Delta.†   (source)
  • Their masks turn and toss high above their heads--as they will do sporadically throughout all horse scenes--making the steel gleam in the light.†   (source)
  • The heat and light of the August sun made his head ache and hurt his eyes, and the rasp of the car motor, the sporadic bumping of metal against metal somewhere up close to the left front wheel, were unnaturally loud, cutting.†   (source)
  • She turned slowly, jerking sporadically with her arms and legs as if she only heard the music in snatches, and all the time she looked at them with the precocious interest of a child in adult company.†   (source)
  • Pari knows this because Thierry is in sporadic touch with Isabelle.†   (source)
  • He cried himself to sleep, when he could muster the energy, but his sleep was fitful and sporadic.†   (source)
  • The shelling resumed sporadically after breakfast, and now, around six Rm.†   (source)
  • Wisps of smoke sporadically rise, looking ghastly in the night sky.†   (source)
  • But though our talk was casual and sporadic there was never anything simple about it.†   (source)
  • Then its ammunition belt starts to burst sporadically, and Hiro has to look away.†   (source)
  • The pattern became sporadic conversations and long silences.†   (source)
  • She noticed that he had become sloppier and more sporadic with balancing his accounts.†   (source)
  • Sporadic pops, not continuous fire, which meant that Grace was being methodical.†   (source)
  • The headaches that had tormented her after surgery had subsided and came back only sporadically.†   (source)
  • More houses sporadically lined the road now, most of them still deserted.†   (source)
  • The voice of the New York operator faded sporadically over the line.†   (source)
  • Only Arya, and then sporadically because she traveled so often.†   (source)
  • "You've really only been working at this for a few days and you're already projecting sporadically.†   (source)
  • The lights would go down, the music become softer, the talk more sporadic and more sincere.†   (source)
  • Dawn arrived with a steel-gray sky and a sporadic drizzling of sleet that rattled on the roof.†   (source)
  • Lincoln's church attendance became sporadic in his adult life.†   (source)
  • It might also be that his riddle was the result of one of his sporadic fits of foresight.†   (source)
  • I was there full-time during that summer and then sporadically after that.†   (source)
  • In New Jersey the fighting would continue sporadically as winter wore on.†   (source)
  • But suddenly, the echoes of the blast died away, and I could hear sporadic gunfire from these three maniacs.†   (source)
  • And second, that the absence of communicable disease meant the recent episodes of sporadic lizard bites implied no serious health hazards for Costa Rica.†   (source)
  • When he was growing up, Wes. would occasionally follow his mother to the New Metropolitan Church on Sunday, but even on his sporadic visits, he never felt any connection.†   (source)
  • She was originally drawn to it because of her sporadic sightings of the whistler of Himmel Street—Pfiffikus.†   (source)
  • Sporadic rifle fire kept us on edge.†   (source)
  • The walk to the rendezvous point was an interminable one, and as they walked Saeed and Nadia did not hold hands, for that was forbidden in public between genders, even for an ostensibly married couple, but from time to time their knuckles would brush at their sides, and this sporadic physical contact was important to them.†   (source)
  • But —as evidenced by the blank journal I'd been given by Mr. Neuspeil, my English teacher; Mrs. Swan-son's suggestion that I start attending art classes after school; Enrique's offer to take me down to watch basketball at the courts on Sixth Avenue; and even Mr. Barbour's sporadic attempts to interest me in chart markers and nautical flags — a lot of adults had the same idea.†   (source)
  • The sleeping woman used the alarm only sporadically, mostly when her husband was absent, but on this night she had forgotten.†   (source)
  • It took me nearly ten minutes, firing back behind me sporadically to try to pin them down…. just in case.†   (source)
  • C. W. Shumway observed the Los Angeles revival of 1906 and noted six basic symptoms: complete loss of rational control; dominance of emotion that leads to hysteria; absence of thought or will; automatic functioning of the speech organs; amnesia; and occasional sporadic physical manifestations such as jerking or twitching.†   (source)
  • There was no news, really; the picture kept returning to night shots of the museum (looking perfectly normal now, except for the yellow police tape still strung up on the sidewalk, the armed guards out front, rags of smoke blowing up sporadically from the roof into the Klieglit sky).†   (source)
  • They rarely spoke on the telephone and met only sporadically, and she suspected he had many other women.†   (source)
  • Saeed was torn because he was moved by these words, strengthened by them, and they were not the barbarous words of the militants back home, the militants because of whom his mother was dead, and possibly by now his father as well, but at the same time the gathering of men drawn to the words of the man with the white-marked beard sporadically did remind him of the militants, and when he thought this he felt something rancid in himself, like he was rotting from within.†   (source)
  • It's another ten minutes before I see the faint twinkle of lights flashing sporadically beyond the trees—thank God, since I was beginning to think I was walking in circles—and another five before the woods thin out and I can see the house, a big pile of ice-cream cake sitting on that lawn, shimmering in and out as the rain bends and splits the lights from the porch.†   (source)
  • It was cool out; the sky was broken with patches of white, and the sun peeked through the clouds sporadically.†   (source)
  • Most were silent, but a few snored, others lighted cigarettes, and there were sporadic lurchings towards the bathroom, where the fluorescent lights remained on.†   (source)
  • When Deo and I arrived in Bujumbura, curfews were still observed, and there were reports of sporadic fighting between the government and the PALIPEHUTU/FNL, which still hadn't agreed to terms.†   (source)
  • Abee could see Ted's jaw muscles clenching in sporadic rhythm, his finger stroking the Glock trigger.†   (source)
  • His figure is illuminated by the headlights of the car as he walks away from the vehicle, sporadically kicking at the ground and cursing obscenities.†   (source)
  • Still, he had to admit that the tip of its wing was badly singed and the moth's flutters seemed sporadic and distressed.†   (source)
  • She put her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place, her fingers flexing sporadically to emphasize her words.†   (source)
  • Her letters had never stopped, one season to another, though they arrived sporadically and were nearly always five or six months out of date.†   (source)
  • Behind them, just a few feet away, a car engine was clicking as it cooled, the sounds muffled and sporadic.†   (source)
  • Baths tended to be sporadic and infrequent events for Roran, but today was an important day, and he wanted to be fresh and clean for what was to come.†   (source)
  • Since the funeral, she'd kept in sporadic contact with Jeb, calling every now and then to see how he was doing.†   (source)
  • The moonlight was sporadic, low-flying clouds intercepting the rays, but the yellow wash was sufficient.†   (source)
  • Every now and then a perverse downdraft would make the smoke whirl and eddy toward him, and sporadic whiffs of the smoke touched him.†   (source)
  • The roof of opaque smoke covered the moon and stars, plunging the land into profound darkness that was broken only by the sullen glow of the sporadic peat fires, and by the thousands of torches each army lit.†   (source)
  • By now my segments on the plaza were seeing hand lights sporadically visible in the nearest upper-city streets.†   (source)
  • Then a few people arrived and there was sporadic conversation, a little awkward at times, because not everyone knew everyone.†   (source)
  • Wong's sporadic gunfire was keeping the three remaining men of Sheng's elite patrol where they were, afraid to move.†   (source)
  • It covered Lieutenant Schrier's expedition up Suribachi with the forty-man patrol from Easy, and the planting of the first American flag at ten-twenty A.M. It mentioned the blowing-up of caves, the recovery of the Japanese binoculars, the sporadic resistance by fleeing Japanese.†   (source)
  • A cuckolded statesman loses his constituency faster than a sporadic drunk; it means he's fully lost his grip.†   (source)
  • Though Adam's attendance at church was sporadic throughout his childhood, at age fourteen he had invited the Lord into his heart and been baptized at Center Fork Missionary Baptist Church, where he was taught that God forgave his sins and offered him eternal salvation.†   (source)
  • Sporadic cries arose as villagers scattered for safety, but there were no sounds of swordplay or resistance, Thomas noted.†   (source)
  • Abdullah ran forward to the cab, as sporadic bursts of gunfire crackled from both sides of the road, then shouted toward the ditch for Kais to translate.†   (source)
  • When I met and interviewed those men after his death, they told me that John had sporadically written little Christmas notes over the years.†   (source)
  • In fact he'd played only sporadically as a child, being bedridden at times, that awful word, and treated for asthma, for recurring colds and sore throats and whooping cough.†   (source)
  • Tears rolled down her thin cheeks and she made doomed, sporadic efforts to control the trembling of her little-girl's mouth.†   (source)
  • He had to reach McAllister before Sheng's contingent closed in on him and saw through the sporadic moonlight that he was alone.†   (source)
  • She read with interest a report on what measures had been taken and which addresses had been put under sporadic surveillance.†   (source)
  • He kept to himself for much of that time, attending classes sporadically and focusing almost all of his attention on the slim ribbon of silk on which he inked one rune after another while standing under the moonlight atop Old Tom.†   (source)
  • He reached a point roughly thirty paces away from the eighth door on the left and turned around, suddenly aware of a muted chorus of sporadic sobs and cries that came from closed doorways along the hotel corridor.†   (source)
  • Dressed in combat fatigues with the insignias of an army major on the shoulders of his field jacket, Bourne blended in with the sporadic appearances of military personnel as they crisscrossed the American compound from one sector to another on their night patrols.†   (source)
  • But Mimmi might have talked about the car when she was questioned by the police, and obviously Lundagatan was under sporadic surveillance.†   (source)
  • Whitefaced computers rose above the white counters on the left, dozens of thin, dark rectangular mouths sporadically indented, their teeth digital readouts forming luminescent green numbers that constantly changed with inviolate frequency alterations and less sophisticated, less secure means of sending and receiving information.†   (source)
  • To the best of my knowledge, neither of us has a wife or a family, only sporadic lovers to fill our beds, and loud, annoying nephews and nieces to fill our flats on certain holidays; no really close friends except now and then an enemy we respect, who, for all we know and in spite of our truce, might shoot us or poison us with a drink.†   (source)
  • As the door was sporadically opened for entering or departing clientele, metallic martial music blared forth into the alley; and the clientele were not candidates for an haute couture cotillion.†   (source)
  • The two older men walked off to the side speaking quietly as Alex and Mo Panov held their places, the latter frowning and sporadically breathing deeply.†   (source)
  • The brown sedan sped down the country road, racing past overgrown fields, the driver maniacally gripping the wheel and sporadically glancing at his bound prisoner, a young man who kept straining at his wire-bound hands and feet, his rope-strapped face causing him enormous pain, attested to by his constant grimace and his bulging frightened eyes.†   (source)
  • They left reluctantly, but left permanently and returned only on sporadic visits to pay homage to the relatives too old or too stubborn to leave.†   (source)
  • By breakfast, save for sporadic laments, Gant was in something approaching good humor.†   (source)
  • Where they had been were now long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling the sporadic course of a lilliputian mowing machine.†   (source)
  • A lovely toy — you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby, and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of Snakes and Ladders.†   (source)
  • More and more, as the years passed, she devoted herself to sporadic reading—biography (Daniel Boone or Marie Antoinette), what is called "good fiction," books on social betterment—and to work without pay for a settlement house and an orphanage.†   (source)
  • Once, Gant, making one of his sporadic efforts to get his son fixed in employment, had sent him out to a country graveyard to put up a small monument.†   (source)
  • Occasionally he saw these boys again, occasionally he resumed again, at sporadic intervals, his association with them, but he now had no steady companionship, he had only a series of associations with children whose parents stayed for a time at Dixieland, with Tim O'Doyle, whose mother ran the Brunswick, with children here and there who briefly held his interest.†   (source)
  • Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of trouble, sporadic or general.†   (source)
  • It was a sporadic case.†   (source)
  • Eventually, in the year 1869, the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have been sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.†   (source)
  • Both gentlemen started violently, looked round, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat.†   (source)
  • At once, because of those recent few and, as he now saw them, foolish visits to her room, on which occasions because of some remaining sentiment and desire on the part of both he had been betrayed into sporadic and decidedly unwise physical relations with her, he now realized what the difficulty was.†   (source)
  • The walk to the beach was no inconsiderable one, consisting as it did of a long, sandy path, upon which a sporadic and tangled growth that bordered it on either side made frequent and unexpected inroads.†   (source)
  • He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American — that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, 76 with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.†   (source)
  • It has an active and smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce.†   (source)
  • The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage.†   (source)
  • Jamie bowed gracefully to the latest toaster, and sat down amid the increasingly sporadic applause.†   (source)
  • He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.†   (source)
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