Continuous means going on with no break in it. The hum of the fridge, a fence that runs the whole length of the field, three days of continuous rain.
The pair to watch is continuous and continual. Continuous is unbroken; continual is repeated with gaps in between, so continual interruptions arrive one after another while continuous noise never stops at all. The word works in space as well as in time: a continuous line, a continuous surface, a continuous strip of shops. Grammar borrows it for the be plus -ing forms, which is where most learners meet it first, in the present continuous (I am waiting) and the past continuous (she was reading). The adverb is continuously and the noun is continuity, the thing a film crew keeps one person on set to protect.
1adjectivecontinuousGoing on in time without a break.
“Ten hours of continuous driving is too much for one person.”
2adjectiveunbrokenUnbroken in space; joined all the way along.
“The hedge forms a continuous barrier around the whole garden.”
3adjectivegrammarIn grammar, of the verb form made with be and -ing, describing an action in progress.
“The present continuous describes what is happening right now.”
Latin continuus meant hanging together, uninterrupted, and it comes from contineō, to hold together. That is the picture worth keeping: a continuous thing is one whose parts are still holding on to each other, with nothing let in between them. Contain, container and continent grow from the same holding verb.
Latin
continuus
English, today
continuous
Built from
From Latin continuus, from contineō (“hold together”). Displaced native singal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA