continual or continuous?
Something continual continues, with breaks, over a period of time, whereas something continuous goes on without stopping. So a continual noise is one that is constantly repeated, like a dog's barking, and a continuous noise is one that continues without stopping, like the roar of a waterfall. The same distinction applies to the adverbs continually and continuously: Hecklers continually interrupted the speaker.She drove continuously for two hours. In popular usage, however, continual and continually are now frequently used to mean "without stopping."
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