Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In a desultory or random manner; without method; loosely.
Wiktionary
- adv. In a desultory fashion
GNU Webster's 1913
- adv. In a desultory manner; without method; loosely; immethodically.
Etymologies
- desultory + -ly (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Hall's authority came from his citations, a mass so large that "desultorily" can hardly describe the intensity of his collecting.”
“Apparently, even when St. Vlad was ordering breakfast, muttering in his sleep, desultorily shifting the surface-clues in alphabet soup or gasping shamed urgencies in Vera's ear ... etc.”
“One day four months ago, I was sitting at home desultorily scanning job boards and e-mailing resumes, when the phone rang.”
The Huffington Post: Naomi Cohn: How I Got a Job After Two Years Without One
“I've just been home, desultorily knitting and walking the dog, and I haven't accomplished nearly what you did while making a transatlantic trip AND attending a lovely 3 day party/family reunion!”
“Ordering a few leaves and poking at them desultorily does not constitute sharing a meal.”
“He was a year older and had a BB rifle with him, shooting desultorily at trees, cans, fence posts.”
“In that jaundiced reportorial frame of mind, sitting in the press compound at Bristol, desultorily I watched a woman shepherd a young man in a wheelchair onto the gym floor.”
The Huffington Post: Bittergate: the Untold Story Behind the Story that Rocked the Obama Campaign
“Around me perched on the uncomfortable chairs (how does Helen Thomas sleep here?), wedged in with battery packs and backpacks spilling BlackBerries and spiral notebooks, are a few of the visiting press conversing desultorily in Spanish.”
The Huffington Post: Mayhill Fowler: A Citizen Journalist Covers an Obama State Dinner [PHOTOS]
“HANNITY chuckles desultorily and pulls out a tray of cookies shaped like snowmen, candy canes, crucifixes, firearms, coat hangers and bright-orange cookies shaped like gingerbread men.”
“Jefferson recalled that Henry “said the strongest things in the finest language, but without logic, without arrangement, desultorily” 390, and yet, it seems, very effectively.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘desultorily’.
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suzyg's Words
brandish, recompence, shopping, dichotomy, paradigm, reverse osmosis, anyway, despite, drunk, degenerate, insipid, grateful and 438 more...
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Adverbia
A long list of adverbs, beginning with full-drive. Someone had to list them. This list in continued in the list More Adverbia.
Read some sniping and some informative commentary about a...full-drive, portentously, unlawfully, legally, heterogeneously, consumingly, clancularly, inconsolably, prepositionally, retrogressively, symptomatically, decrepitly and 2460 more...
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Words of the Week
impregnable, haven, ecstatic, challenge, origin, persistent, acute, robust, evaporate, accomplished, fortuitous, gratitude and 49 more...
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Unusual Vocabulary from Network (1976)
Rare words and uses of words from the film "Network", just because I love the dialogue so much. I wish I could find a version of the screenplay to see what gems didn't make the cut. (I'm just going...
precipitate, mandarin, ecumenical, hobgoblin, unconscionable, Savonarola, messianic, top brass, auspicatory, oraculate, jeremiad, sibilant and 30 more...
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