A range with no steps in it, where every point shades into the next. Continua resist the categories laid over them.
Latin continuum, neuter of continuus (unbroken), from continere (to hold together); a range with no steps in it, where every point shades into its neighbor rather than standing apart.
It shares its root with continuity, and the kinship is the point: a continuum is what a thing looks like from inside that unbroken hold, before anyone has cut it into named steps. The steps always arrive later, and always from outside the thing itself.