Meaning

4 senses

  1. Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order, planning, or rational connection; lacking logical sequence.

    Near-synonyms: aimless, chaotic, disconnected, erratic, haphazard, meandering, quodlibetic, quodlibetical, random, rambling, scattered, unmethodical, unsystematic, wandering

    He wandered round, cleaning up in a desultory way.

    sprunghaft, unzusammenhängend

    беспорядочныйbesporjadočnyj, несвязанныйnesvjazannyj

    безладнийbezladnyj, хаотичнийxaotyčnyj

    marked by lack of definite plan or regularity or purpose; jumping from one thing to another

  2. Out of course; by the way; not connected with the subject.

    Near-synonyms: extraneous, incidental, irrelevant, nongermane, spurious, stray, unconnected, ungermane, unrelated

    I made a desultory remark while I was talking to my friend.

    несвязныйnesvjaznyj

    непов'язанийnepovʺjazanyj, недоладнийnedoladnyj

  3. Disappointing in performance or progress.

    Near-synonyms: half-assed, halfhearted

  4. (obsolete)Leaping, skipping or flitting about, generally in a random or unsteady manner.

Examples

1 sentences

  1. Most of the others also lit their pipes and a desultory conversation ensued.

    deDie meisten anderen zündeten ebenfalls ihre Pfeifen an und es ergab sich ein zusammenhangloses Gespräch. — samueldora

    Scott · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FR · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem

Translations

6 languages
Українська
By meaning 2
jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection:
out of course; by the way; not connected with the subject:
Русский
By meaning 2
jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection:
out of course; by the way; not connected with the subject:
Deutsch
By meaning 1
jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection:

Origin

From Latin dēsultōrius (“hasty, casual, superficial”), from dēsultor (“a circus rider who

From Latin dēsultōrius (“hasty, casual, superficial”), from dēsultor (“a circus rider who jumped from one galloping horse to another”), from dēsiliō (“jump down”), from dē (“down”) + saliō (“jump, leap”).

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

more desultory, most desultory
Comparativemore desultory Lesson
Superlativemost desultory Lesson

regular

Synonyms

24 synonyms
aimlessC1chaoticB2haphazardC2spuriousC2strayC1unrelatedB1disconnectederraticmeanderingquodlibeticquodlibeticalrandomramblingscattered

Antonyms

3 antonyms
aproposgermanerelevantB2

Word family

5 related words
RelatedsomersaultC1salientsaltatory
Deriveddesultorilydesultoriness

Lessons for this word

2 lessons

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
destroyerdestructdestructionB1destructiveB1detachB2detachabledetachmentB2

Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.

desultory — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto