I'm not complaining about people using 'intermittent' and 'sporadic' interchangeably; I can't actually recall any notable instances of anyone using 'sporadic'. I'm complaining about people using 'intermittent' to describe any occurrence pattern they don't understand.
In real life, when people describe a phenomenon as "intermittent", they mean "it just happens whenever it feels like it and I don't know why, but if I use a word with a lot of syllables to describe this, I'll sound clever rather than stupid." I have had people use the word seven or eight times in the space of a two-minute phone call.
People using a word to signal something while oblivious to the actual, useful, important meaning of that word wind me up no end. This is possibly why I don't get along with critical theory.
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In real life, when people describe a phenomenon as "intermittent", they mean "it just happens whenever it feels like it and I don't know why, but if I use a word with a lot of syllables to describe this, I'll sound clever rather than stupid." I have had people use the word seven or eight times in the space of a two-minute phone call.
People using a word to signal something while oblivious to the actual, useful, important meaning of that word wind me up no end. This is possibly why I don't get along with critical theory.