Continuous use of Contiguous
Someone please tell me the substantive difference between "Contiguous" and "Continuous".
I realize there is some nuance of difference, but not enough to make that much of a difference.
I think writers just like "contiguous" because it makes them sound smarter to the general population.
Dictionary.com provides this definition of "Contiguous": Connected in time; uninterrupted. Or Sharing an edge or boundary; touching.
And this for "Continuous": Uninterrupted in time, sequence, substance, or extent. or Attached together in repeated units.
To summarize: They are synonyms but aren't listed as synonyms for each other (at least not at Dictionary.com or in Microsoft Word's thesaurus). And, personally, I think the word "contiguous" just sounds bad - like you mispronounced "continuous".
I think we should start a petition to ban the word "contiguous" from the English language and common usage... along with that first "r" in February.
3 comments:
Found this post on Google and you rock. My thoughts exactly!
From 'Physics' by Aristotle:
"A thing that is in succession and touches is 'contiguous'. The 'continuous' is a subdivision of the contiguous: things are called continuous when the touching limits of each become one and the same and are, as the word implies, contained in each other: continuity is impossible if these extremities are two. This definition makes it plain that continuity belongs to things that naturally in virtue of their mutual contact form a unity. And in whatever way that which holds them together is one, so too will the whole be one, e.g. by a rivet or glue or contact or organic union."
The following is what I recall from a maths lecture several years ago, so I could be wrong...
(Sorry the graphs don't show up as I need them tho. I don't know how to specify a fixed width font in the comments - hopefully you can figure out how the graphs should look.)
Let's say you monitor the voltage on a wire at times T1, T2 and T3 and your results are (T1:10v, T2:5v, T3:15v).
You graph your results with time on the X-axis and Voltage on the Y-axis.
15v: ___
10v: ___
5v: ___
0v:
T1,T2,T3
It is true to say that Y is continuous for values of X between T1 and T3.
It is NOT true to say that Y is contiguous for values of X between T1 and T3 because the values of Y do not join up with each other.
If the results had yielded the following graph.
15v:
10v: ________
5v:
0v:
T1,T2,T3
or any sort of unbroken curve (a straight line being a specific type of curve) it would be true to say that Y is both continuous and contiguous for X between T1 and T3. Here the use of "continuous" is redundant as it is implicit from the use of "contiguous".
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