Definition of "discontinuous" [dis•con•tin•u•ous]

• Marked by breaks or interruptions; intermittent: discontinuous applause. (adjective)
• Consisting of distinct or unconnected elements, such as the physical features of a landscape. (adjective)
• Being without sequential order or coherent form. (adjective)
• Mathematics Possessing one or more discontinuities, as a function. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The authors have used the flowering date in a second model and that uses what I call a discontinuous function, and that would not involve solving for roots or at least as I see it."
• "Galileo introduces B lock Selection (sometime called discontinuous selection): the ability to select a box of text regardless of the line breaks or any other white-spaces."
• "Phillip A. Sharp in 1977 independently discovered that genes could be discontinuous, that is, a given gene could be present in the genetic material (DNA) as several, well-separated segments."