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Continuing or continuous?

continuing is a noun meaning “A continuation”; continuous is an adjective meaning “Without stopping; without a break, cessation, or interruption”. Use continuing as a noun and continuous as an adjective (continuing is also an adjective: “Being the successor to a no longer extant organization…”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) continuing is about 1.9 times as common as continuous.

continuingorcontinuous

What is the difference between continuing and continuous?

continuingcontinuous
Part of speechnoun, adjective, verbadjective
Meaning

A continuation

UKBeing the successor to a no longer extant organization, operating under the same name and usually claiming to be the same entity

Without stopping; without a break, cessation, or interruption

Without intervening space; continued

Examplenone recordedthe continuous roar of a waterfall
Formscontinuingsnone
Pronunciation/kənˈtɪn.juːɪŋ/ /kənˈtɪn.juɪŋ//kənˈtɪn.juː.əs/ /-(j)ɪu̯.əs/
In writing30 times per million words16 times per million words

Sources: continuing and continuous in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Every current meaning of continuing and continuous

continuing

  1. 1

    noun A continuation

  2. 2

    adjective UKBeing the successor to a no longer extant organization, operating under the same name and usually claiming to be the same entity

continuous

  1. 1

    adjective Without stopping; without a break, cessation, or interruption

    the continuous roar of a waterfall

  2. 2

    adjective Without intervening space; continued

    a continuous line of railroad

  3. 3

    adjective Not deviating or varying from uniformity; not interrupted; not joined or articulated

  4. 4

    adjective Such that, for every x in the domain, for each small open interval D about f(x), there's an interval containing x whose image is in D

  5. 5

    adjective Such that each open set in the target space has an open preimage (in the domain space, with respect to the given function)

    Each continuous function from the real line to the rationals is constant, since the rationals are totally disconnected

  6. 6

    adjective Expressing an ongoing action or state

Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.

Which is more common, continuing or continuous?

continuing appears 30 times per million words; continuous 16 times per million words.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

The words