时而 is pronounced shí’ér and means “from time to time; now … now …”. It is one of the words in the HSK 6 vocabulary, a level of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, China’s standardised Chinese proficiency test. Recognising a word on a page and recalling it when you need it are different skills, and only the second survives a conversation — which is why LexiTrail shows you 时而 again just before you would have forgotten it, rather than on a fixed schedule.