They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, and what he might be like.
The storm wore away as desultorily as it had come, and the long night set in.
"You look tired and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.
All these apartments were now deserted, save for a few flunkeys who stood about desultorily in the window embrasures.
But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling up behind her.
I began to watch him, desultorily, and was rather startled by something more than a suspicion that he himself was watching me.
I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year, a very quiet, desultorily studious existence.
Dick, desultorily bracing a leaning post of one of the corrals, saw him coming and grinned.
She came and sat beside me on the river-balcony, and talked a little, desultorily and absent-mindedly.
In time, the talk between the two young men, which had begun so desultorily, warmed up.
disappointing in quality or performance
Latin de- + salire 'to leap'
1580s, "skipping about," from Latin desultorius "hasty, casual, superficial," adjective form of desultor (n.) "a rider in the circus who jumps from one horse to another while they are in gallop," from desul-, stem of desilire "jump down," from de- "down" (see de-) + salire "to jump, leap" (see salient (adj.)). Sense of "irregular, without aim or method" is c.1740. Related: Desultorily; desultoriness.
