Make Your Point > Archived Issues > DISCONTINUITY

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connect today's word to others: We love words, don't we? One thing we love about them is their flexibility. That is, we find joy in how sustain can become sustained, sustaining, sustenance, sustainability and so on as it serves our desire to phrase an idea in some exact way. Loving a word's flexibility is why I bring familiar words like discontinuity to your attention. Sure, you already know what it means. But let's give it our attention so we can keep speaking and writing flexibly about continuing and continuity and the lack of continuity. While we're thinking about flexibility in word forms, see if you can turn the words below into adjectives: 1. "Capacity:" c________ (as in "a c________ mind"). 2. "Embrace:" e________ (as in "an e_______ policy"). 3. "Germ" (meaning "seed"): g_______ (as in "a g_______ idea"). (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) make your point with... "DISCONTINUITY" Something that continues smoothly without any jumps, skips, lags, pauses, or interruptions is continuous; we can say it has continuity. And something that doesn't continue smoothly--that is, something that does have jumps, skips, lags, pauses, or interruptions is discontinuous; it has discontinuity. (Or, it has discontinuities.) In other words, something's discontinuity is its failure to be continuous. It's a state or quality of having jumps, skips, lags, pauses, and/or interruptions, especially when you were expecting it to continue smoothly instead. Pronunciation: DISS KON tuh NEW uh dee Part of speech: Noun. It can be the countable kind ("a discontinuity," "two discontinuities," "so many discontinuities") as well as the uncountable kind ("the discontinuity," "some discontinuity," "the presence of discontinuity"). Other forms: discontinuities; discontinue, discontinuous/discontinual, discontinuously How to use it: First, notice that you can talk about discontinuity like it's a general quality ("the story has such discontinuity"), or you can talk about a discontinuity like it's a specific instance of jumping, skipping, lagging, pausing, or being interrupted ("the story has so many discontinuities"). Basically, you talk about something's discontinuity (or discontinuities), or about the discontinuity of something, or the discontinuity between or among or across multiple things. You might be literal and talk about the discontinuity of, say, bike lanes. Most of the time, you use this word figuratively. You can talk about the discontinuity of a service, such as healthcare or Internet, or the discontinuity of an anecdote, a story, a dream, a memory, a show, a film, a novel, etc. Or, talk about a discontinuity between theory and practice, the discontinuity between someone's beliefs and behaviors, a discontinuity between the data and the conclusions or recommendations, the discontinuity between the facts and the analysis or the inferences, etc. examples: What confuses young readers about Whirligig is its discontinuity, each chapter focusing on a different time and place and set of characters, so I suggest they read the table of contents first to get a feel for how the story will unfold.  "Like all their films, 'Permission Streak' is full of lurching discontinuities and a prevailing sense of hectic, dread-infused euphoria."    — Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post, 23 February 2018 study it now: Look away from the screen to define "discontinuity" without saying "inconsistency" or "a lack of smooth continuation." try it out: Fill in the blanks: "What's unsettling about _____ is (its or their) discontinuity."      Example: "What's unsettling about those memories is their discontinuity." Or, "What's unsettling about _____ and _____ is the discontinuity between them."      Example: "What's unsettling about the original series and the spinoff is the discontinuity between them." before you review: Spend at least 20 seconds occupying your mind with the game below. Then try the review questions. Don’t go straight to the review now—let your working memory empty out first. Our game this month is "A Doodad Named After a Thingamajig." If I give you two categories, X and Y, can you think of an X that was named after a Y? We'll start off easy--these first few questions will have lots of correct answers each that you might think up--and we'll work our way toward harder questions that, as far as I know, have only one correct answer each. From the previous issue: Can you think of a vehicle named after a French province? The only answer I know of is the limousine. (If you know more, please share them!) Try this one today: Can you think of a construction material named after a city? review today's word: 1. The exact opposite is CONTINUITY, but a close opposite of DISCONTINUITY is A. VIGOR. B. COHESION. C. DURABILITY. 2. We naturally attend to discontinuities; it's why we notice whenever a commercial _____. A. appeals to our sense of nostalgia B. features human-like baby animals  C. omits a portion from a familiar song Answers are below. a final word: Make Your Point is crafted with love and brought to you each weekday morning by Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From Liesl's blog:    36 ways to study words.    Why we forget words, & how to remember them.    How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes. Answers to review questions: 1. B 2. C