Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The character of being perfunctory; negligent or half-hearted performance; carelessness.
Wiktionary
- n. The state or characteristic of being perfunctory.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The quality or state of being perfunctory.
Etymologies
- perfunctory + ness (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Whereas other candidates for public office make their promises with a certain perfunctoriness, Sarkozy looked his electors in the eye: “Everything I have spoken, I will perform,” he said fiercely.”
“It is strange that crucial policy decisions are handled with such mediocrity and perfunctoriness.”
“When at dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each other, and she went out of the station alone.”
“Hence her words “very nice,” “so charming,” were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.”
“When she spoke there was no trace of the seductive in her voice, but rather a steely perfunctoriness.”
“Memory has been emptied out by the long years abroad, and a certain perfunctoriness and staleness hangs over the scene.”
“Quickly he undid his breeches and climbed on her, ashamed of the perfunctoriness of it, but needing to do it and get it over with.”
“Got it," he replied with equal perfunctoriness, and waded off into the mob.”
“The book as a whole, it must be said, gives an impression of slightness, even of perfunctoriness in some places; yet it does throw a light of an unexpected kind on Singer's achievements as a writer of fiction.”
“But, as time passed and as the nature of its organization and operation evolved, the perfunctoriness of its proclamations became more and more evident.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘perfunctoriness’.
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Rognons of Random Palavery
Another of my random palavery lists for terms and phrases that don't fit into any of my other lists.
priorship, exigeant, refectory, reestablish, capper, reesed, quar, reprune, orificial, reaming-iron, terminist, terminism and 3097 more...
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Word of Infinite Jest
quincunx, plosivity, prolix, aleatory, diagnate, appetitive, experialist, candidiatic, chapeau, perfidiously, antitheory, décolletage and 150 more...
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practice test 1
compound word, semantic, root, radical, coinage, denote, connote, lionization, caprice, equivocal, subcutaneous, metabolism and 68 more...
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Theorie: The Madwoman's Underclothes
'The Madwoman's Underclothes' book is a collection of writings by Germaine Greer from 1968 to 1985. The title refers to what she sees as being the media's obsession with her going bra-less. Warning...
homespun, shuck, flyte, animadversion, groover, tom jones, fucker, cocksman, sweety-sharp, goatman, ha-ha, corridor of power and 84 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for perfunctoriness.
bilby "In all cases of petty rape, the victim does not figure as a personality, as someone vulnerable and valuable, whose responses must not be cynically tampered with. So great is women's need to believe that men really like them that they are often slow to detect perfunctoriness in proferred caresses or the subtle change in attitude when the Rubicon has been crossed and the softening up of the victim can give way to unilateral gratification."
- 'Seduction is a four-letter word', Germaine Greer in The Madwoman's Underclothes. Sep 1, 2008