by fits and starts

1. 1.

   intermittently

   “he worked on his book by fits and starts”

Questions about by fits and starts

What does by fits and starts mean?

by fits and starts means "intermittently".

Is by fits and starts a common word?

by fits and starts is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.