Noncontiguously

Noncontiguously is the adverb form of noncontiguous, describing an action or arrangement that is not contiguous; that is, it does not touch or form a single uninterrupted sequence. The term combines the prefix non- with contiguous, which means touching or adjacent in space or time. As a general descriptor, noncontiguously can refer to any situation in which elements are separated by gaps or intervening material.

In geography, noncontiguously describes areas that are not connected in space. The noncontiguous United States is a standard phrase used to refer to Alaska and Hawaii as separated from the lower 48 states by distance and water.

In computing, data can be stored noncontiguously. Noncontiguous memory allocation places blocks of memory at non-adjacent addresses, which can complicate access patterns and performance. Noncontiguous file allocation stores file fragments in multiple locations on a storage device; fragmentation is the related phenomenon, while defragmentation reorganizes data to make access more contiguous.

In linguistics, noncontiguously may describe relationships or dependencies that are not realized in adjacent positions within a sentence, such as long-distance dependencies or extraction phenomena.

See also: contiguity, contiguous, fragmentation, noncontiguous United States.