All 6 Uses of
desultory
in
The House of Mirth
- If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him.†
Chpt 1.1
- Suddenly her expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.†
Chpt 1.1 *
- In this desultory yet agitated fashion life went on through Lily's teens: a zig-zag broken course down which the family craft glided on a rapid current of amusement, tugged at by the underflow of a perpetual need—the need of more money.†
Chpt 1.3
- She had barely enough money to pay her dress-makers' bills and her gambling debts; and none of the desultory interests which she dignified with the name of tastes was pronounced enough to enable her to live contentedly in obscurity.†
Chpt 1.3
- Hitherto he had found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.†
Chpt 1.6
- It was mid-April, and one felt that the revelry had reached its climax and that the desultory groups in the square and gardens would soon dissolve and re-form in other scenes.†
Chpt 2.1
Definition:
-
(desultory) without plan or enthusiasm