The hundred men at the Gobelins must have worked but sadly and desultorily over such scant and distasteful commissioning.
The storm wore away as desultorily as it had come, and the long night set in.
They went on to talk, desultorily, of Don Ippolito, and what he might be like.
But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling up behind her.
When the children were in bed, sometimes Anna and he sat and talked, desultorily, both of them idle.
I began to watch him, desultorily, and was rather startled by something more than a suspicion that he himself was watching me.
"You look tired and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.
I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year, a very quiet, desultorily studious existence.
In time, the talk between the two young men, which had begun so desultorily, warmed up.
Dick, desultorily bracing a leaning post of one of the corrals, saw him coming and grinned.
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.
