Desultory

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Desultory \Des"ul*to*ry\, a. [L. desultorius, fr. desultor a
     leaper, fr. desilire, desultum, to leap down; de + salire to
     leap. See {Saltation}.]
     1. Leaping or skipping about. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]
  


              I shot at it [a bird], but it was so desultory that
              I missed my aim.                      --Gilbert
                                                    White.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another,
        without order or rational connection; without logical
        sequence; disconnected; immethodical; aimless; as,
        desultory minds. --Atterbury.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              He [Goldsmith] knew nothing accurately; his reading
              had been desultory.                   --Macaulay.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Out of course; by the way; as a digression; not connected
        with the subject; as, a desultory remark.
  
     Syn: Rambling; roving; immethodical; discursive; inconstant;
          unsettled; cursory; slight; hasty; loose.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  desultory
       adj : marked by lack of definite plan or regularity or purpose;
             jumping from one thing to another; "desultory
             thoughts"; "the desultory conversation characteristic
             of cocktail parties"

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  211 Moby Thesaurus words for "desultory":
     aberrant, aberrative, adrift, afloat, aimless, alternating,
     amorphous, broken, by the way, capricious, careening, casual,
     catchy, changeable, changeful, chaotic, choppy, circuitous,
     dancing, dangerous, departing, designless, deviable, deviant,
     deviating, deviative, deviatory, devious, digressive,
     disarticulated, disconnected, discontinuous, discursive, disjunct,
     disordered, disorderly, disorganized, dispersed, disproportionate,
     dizzy, eccentric, episodic, errant, erratic, excursive,
     fast and loose, fickle, fitful, flickering, flickery, flicky,
     flighty, flitting, fluctuating, fluttering, fluttery, formless,
     freakish, frivolous, giddy, gratuitous, guttering, halting,
     haphazard, hazardous, herky-jerky, heteroclite, hit-or-miss,
     immethodical, impetuous, impulsive, inchoate, incoherent,
     inconsistent, inconstant, indecisive, indirect, indiscriminate,
     infirm, insecure, insubstantial, intermittent, intermitting,
     irregular, irresolute, irresponsible, jerky, labyrinthine, loose,
     lurching, maundering, mazy, meandering, meaningless, mercurial,
     misshapen, moody, nonsymmetrical, nonsystematic, nonuniform,
     on-again-off-again, orderless, out-of-the-way, patchy, perilous,
     planetary, planless, precarious, promiscuous, provisional,
     purposeless, rambling, random, restless, risky, rough, roving,
     scatterbrained, scrappy, senseless, serpentine, shaky, shapeless,
     shifting, shifty, shuffling, slippery, snaky, snatchy, spasmatic,
     spasmic, spasmodic, spastic, spineless, spluttering, sporadic,
     spotty, sputtering, sputtery, staggering, straggling, straggly,
     stray, swerving, systemless, temporary, tentative, ticklish,
     treacherous, turning, twisting, unaccountable, unarranged,
     uncertain, unclassified, unconsidered, uncontrolled, undependable,
     undirected, undisciplined, unequal, uneven, unfaithworthy, unfixed,
     ungraded, unjoined, unmethodical, unmetrical, unordered,
     unorganized, unplanned, unpredictable, unregular, unreliable,
     unrestrained, unrhythmical, unsettled, unsolid, unsorted, unsound,
     unstable, unstable as water, unstaid, unsteadfast, unsteady,
     unsubstantial, unsure, unsymmetrical, unsystematic, untrustworthy,
     ununiform, vacillating, vagrant, vague, variable, veering,
     vicissitudinary, vicissitudinous, volatile, wandering, wanton,
     wavering, wavery, wavy, wayward, whimsical, winding, wishy-washy,
     wobbling, wobbly, zigzag