vereinzelten

Vereinzelten is a German word form related to the adjective and participle vereinzelt, which means "isolated," "sporadic" or "scattered." The form vereinzelten occurs as an inflected variant used in different grammatical contexts (for example after articles or prepositions) and can appear in singular or plural phrases depending on case, gender and number. It is commonly found in constructions such as "in vereinzelten Fällen" or "vereinzelten Regenfällen."

Semantically, vereinzelten conveys that occurrences are few and not continuous — individual instances separated from a larger whole rather than forming a pattern. It is used across registers from everyday speech to formal writing, especially in news reporting, scientific descriptions and statistical summaries to indicate rarity or lack of concentration (e.g., "vereinzelte Störungen" — isolated disruptions).

Etymologically the term is derived from the adjective einzeln ("single, individual") with the verbal/derivational element ver-, producing vereinzel(n) as a related verb/participle series; the adverb/adjective vereinzelt is the uninflected base form. English equivalents include "isolated," "sporadic," "occasional," and "scattered." Synonyms in German include vereinzelt and isoliert; antonyms include häufig, zahlreich or kontinuierlich when indicating frequency or density.