adv. [f. prec. + -LY2.]
1. In isolated cases or instances.
1763. Phil. Trans., LIV. 78. Some years it is felt sporadically all the winter.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), II. 121. We find intermittents … existing … sporadically as well as epidemically.
1872. Cohen, Dis. Throat, 97. Although sometimes appearing sporadically, diphtheria is essentially an endemic disease.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VI. 909. Those cases [of meningitis] which though occurring sporadically, resemble the epidemic … form of the disease.
2. In a scattered or dispersed manner; at intervals; occasionally; here and there.
1852. Th. Ross, trans. Humboldt’s Trav., III. xxxii. 352. No snow falls sporadically in any of the eastern systems.
1875. E. White, Life in Christ, IV. xxvi. (1878), 425. That the belief … lingered in the churches sporadically for several centuries.
1885. Athenæum, 16 May, 623/1. The Septuagint does not exist in a critical edition; its Hebrew original has only been sporadically restored.
