desultorily


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des·ul·to·ry

 (dĕs′əl-tôr′ē, dĕz′-)
adj.
1. Moving or jumping from one thing to another; disconnected: "She had suddenly begun speaking, after sitting silently through several hours of desultory discussion ... about the Resistance" (Adam Nossiter).
2. Occurring randomly or sporadically. See Synonyms at chance.

[Latin dēsultōrius, leaping, from dēsultor, a leaper, from dēsultus, past participle of dēsilīre, to leap down : dē-, de- + salīre, to jump; see sel- in Indo-European roots.]

des′ul·to′ri·ly adv.
des′ul·to′ri·ness n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Translations

desultorily

advhalbherzig; chat, talk, dancezwanglos; announce, answer, point outbeiläufig; they walked desultorily toward(s) the housesie schlenderten auf das Haus zu
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007
References in classic literature ?
I have read desultorily the writings of the younger generation.
They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered her.
6 a, b), depicts hierarchical porous MnO2 nanocluster, which were self-assembled desultorily from elongated nanorods with an average size of nearly ~57-190 nm.
And although the slave trade continued desultorily through smuggling until 1840s, the illegal traffic was fast declining and the coastal communities who had depended far too long on a slave-trading economy suffered a rude economic shock.
The two parties were also content to desultorily negotiate a new accountability framework, allowing NAB to continue to exist despite a bipartisan consensus that the organisation needed to be scrapped in favour of an empowered but fair accountability setup.
They fired desultorily and when the magazines were empty, they threw away their guns,' she narrated.
If we accept this premise, then the artist's creative act can be understood as one in which the otherwise merely inconsequentially and desultorily performed act experiences the highest degree of concentration and intensification:
I had just finished throwing up a half gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and already was beginning to wonder what else I could eat and vomit up before desultorily climbing the stairs to bed.
By expanding desultorily, we have disturbed a delicate ecological balance, thereby denying the chance of peaceful co-existence of mankind with nature.
For instance, the gray level of benign lesion assumes disciplinary changes and the gray level of malignant lesion changes desultorily.
The election is presented, and desultorily accepted, as a professionally-targeted series of transactional bribes.
As he clips desultorily at her hair, they chat, but only the odd remark is audible.