irregularity

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Nouns — irregularity, variability, deviation, caprice, uncertainty; tardiness, unpunctuality (see lateness); intermittence, fitfulness, inconstancy. See changeableness, unconformity, discontinuance, roughness, disorder.

Verbs — fluctuate, intermit, come and go; flare up.

Adjectives — irregular, uncertain, unpunctual, capricious, inconstant, desultory, fitful, intermittent, flickering; sporadic, erratic, eccentric, spasmodic, checkered, variable, unstable, changeable, unpredictable, undependable.

Adverbs — irregularly, by fits and starts, off and on, out of turn, from time to time.

Antonyms, see regularity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [Unevenness]

Syn. roughness, bumpiness, jaggedness, stop, break, uncertainty, aberration, shift, change, twist, bump, hump, flaw, imperfection, dent, hole, variation, variability, spasm, deviation, inconsistency, distortion, asymmetry; see also roughness 1 , variation 1 , 2 .

2. [Something that is irregular]

Syn. peculiarity, singularity, anomaly, abnormality, strangeness, uniqueness, exception, excess, unorthodoxy, malfunction, malformation, deviation, dispensation, allowance, exemption, privilege, nonconformity, unconformity, innovation, oddity, eccentricity, rarity, looseness, laxity; see also characteristic , quirk .

Ant. custom*, regularity, rule.

3. [A suspicious or illegal occurrence]

Syn. breach, infringement, violation; see crime 1 , sin , violation 1 .

III

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. Lack of smoothness or regularity: asymmetry, crookedness, inequality, jaggedness, roughness, unevenness. See SMOOTH, STRAIGHT. 2. The condition of being abnormal: aberrance, aberrancy, aberration, abnormality, anomaly, deviance, deviancy, deviation, preter-naturalness, unnaturalness. See GOOD, USUAL.