An intermission is a planned break in the middle of a long performance or event. When you attend a play or musical that lasts two or three hours, there's usually an intermission after the first act. The lights come up, the curtain closes, and the audience gets 15 or 20 minutes to stretch their legs, visit the restroom, or grab a snack before the show continues.

Theaters and concert halls schedule intermissions because sitting still for very long periods is tiring, and performers need time to change costumes or reset the stage. Movies used to have intermissions too, especially epic films like Lawrence of Arabia that ran over three hours. Today, most movies skip the intermission and play straight through, though some theaters bring them back for particularly long films.

Schools sometimes use the word for breaks between activities, like an intermission between sessions at an all-day event. Without intermissions, audiences would get restless, performers would get exhausted, and people would get uncomfortably distracted.