Word of the Day:
desultory
What It Means
Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order, planning, or rational connection; lacking logical sequence.
Out of course; by the way; not connected with the subject.
Disappointing in performance or progress.
Near-synonyms: extraneous, incidental, irrelevant, nongermane, spurious, stray, unconnected, ungermane, unrelated
Desultory in Context
“As we stood waiting for the departure time with the setting sun twinkling on the great brass dome of our 2-4-0, the sound of church bells was the only one apart from the measured tread of the guard slowly pacing towards his van, and, standing at an open window, I more than once heard the fireman's...”
Did You Know?
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”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: desultory (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “desultory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/desultory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.