Word.ws English Dictionary

desultorily

desultorily adverb: in a desultory fashion.

Adverb

desultorily (comparative more desultorily, superlative most desultorily)

  1. In a desultory fashion.
    • She had been working desultorily on her book for several years.
    • I read a page here and there, and made acquaintance with a great many authors whom I was content to know thus desultorily.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC

Forms of desultorily

comparativemore desultorily
superlativemost desultorily

Origin of desultorily

From desultory + -ly.

Questions about desultorily

What does desultorily mean?
Desultorily means in a desultory fashion.
What part of speech is desultorily?
Desultorily is an adverb.

Words near desultorily in the dictionary

  1. desulphurizers
  2. desulphurizes
  3. desulphurizing
  4. desulphurs
  5. desultor
  6. desultorily
  7. desultoriness
  8. desultorinesses
  9. desultorious
  10. desultors
  11. desultory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: desultorily (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “desultorily.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/desultorily. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.