We put our bins out every Tuesday night. Last Wednesday, as we were driving around the neighbourhood, we got stuck behind the rubbish truck as it plodded from house to house, hoisting big bins aloft and emptying their contents into its big rubbish hole. My travelling companion read the notice on the back of the truck.

Caution: vehicle continually stopping

She said “shouldn’t that say continuously?”

It’s one of those tricky pairs of words, where each word means something very similar. To continue is to maintain, keep up or not cease an action. Continually and continuously both convey this basic meaning but there’s an important distinction to be made between the two.

When speaking of an action, if it goes on without cessation, then it’s continuous. Conversely, if the action happens, then happens again, and again, and keeps happening, then it’s continual.

For example, say you had a faulty smoke alarm that wouldn’t stop beeping.

A continual beep would be: beeeeep… beeeeep… beeeeep… beeeeep… beeeeep… beeeeep… and so on.

But a continuous beep would be: beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee… and so on.

So yes, the rubbish truck stops continually. I try to picture it stopping continuously and think of it in one long, never-ending process of slowing down: a kind of Xeno’s paradox of deceleration, halving its speed every second but never actually coming to a complete standstill. An image that continues to be weird.