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desultory
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  • That New Year's Eve, which Owen and Hester and I celebrated at 80 Front Street—in the desultory manner that describes the partying habits of the late teen years (Hester was twenty), and in a relatively quiet manner (because Grandmother had gone to bed)—there were only 3,205 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam.†   (source)
  • Cult specialists see desultory defacement from inexperienced fringe sects-zealots who commit random acts of terrorism-but the Illuminati have always been more deliberate.†   (source)
  • Mord's strap licked out, but it was a halfhearted, desultory swing, slow and contemptuous.†   (source)
  • It was a required course—easy even by the desultory standards of our school — but trying to get Boris to understand about the Bill of Rights, and the enumerated versus implied powers of the U.S. Congress, reminded me of the time I'd tried to explain to Mrs. Barbour what an Internet server was.†   (source)
  • The driver shifted his stance companionably as if they were having a desultory chat on the back steps instead of standing in a blizzard halfway between hoot and holler, with Hallorann's car balanced three hundred feet above the tops of the trees below.†   (source)
  • Mostly he says incomprehensible things in Kikongo but also speaks like Mr. Poe's Raven a desultory English.†   (source)
  • Desultory, sarcastic applause sounds from a few tables in the Hacker Quadrant.†   (source)
  • With a desultory nod of his bored and sleepy head, the Level Crossing Divinity conjured up beggars with bandages, men with trays selling pieces of fresh coconut, parippu vadas on banana leaves.†   (source)
  • I imagined I knew why the women were doing this, ignoring the national sport on a Saturday to gather around Farmer and chat with such mild desultoriness, voices low and musical and unhurried.†   (source)
  • I trained in a desultory way, and only years later, when I had put on a few more pounds, did I begin to box in earnest.†   (source)
  • CHAPTER III A PEAK IN DARIEN So walking, and so desultorily talking, they came out on a noble white highway that wound for miles along the bluffy edge of the upland overlooking the valley upon the one side, fronted by handsome residences on the other.†   (source)
  • He stopped briefly to visit with Logan in a desultory fashion before going back to his book.†   (source)
  • I took out an onion and cut two desultory slices.†   (source)
  • She knew she did not bore him, and she buffed or painted her fingernails studiously while he dozed or brooded and the desultory warm afternoon breeze vibrated delicately on the surface of the beach.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Gervais lived in mortal dread that someone who mattered, someone prominent in the thinly oxygenated heights of Charleston society, would spot Annie Kate during one of her nocturnal promenades through the quiet streets or while she distractedly picked flowers and nervously paced the brick pathways of their desultory garden.†   (source)
  • Harriet watched Barrett's slave, her own hands moving swiftly, stripping the husks from the corn, enjoying the fading light, the coolness that lay over the land, the look of the cornfield now that the crop was harvested, noticing all these things, and working, and yet watching the big young man who stood silent, whose hands moved slowly, desultorily.†   (source)
  • All of these Stem leafed through in a desultory way and then handed over to Red, who took longer with them.†   (source)
  • Regardless, the gun was never recovered—although desultory fishing operations went on for some time.†   (source)
  • Safia Bourihane leafed desultorily through it, mystified.†   (source)
  • Toward noon, Albert roused himself and meandered down to the bay to get a drink Then for an hour or two he hunted sculpins in a desultory fashion, after which he started back toward his bed.†   (source)
  • Like other captive soldiers until the time of Mao, whose soldiers volunteered, Ts'ai Yen fought desultorily when the fighting was at a distance, and she cut down anyone in her path during the madness of close combat.†   (source)
  • In spite of his earlier remonstrances about Southern literature falling into desuetude, his brotherly concern for my work had been constant and encouraging.†   (source)
  • After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use.   (source)
  • At first the conversation was desultory.   (source)
  • In a desultory way he had read a good deal of philosophy, and he looked forward with delight to the leisure of the next few months.   (source)
  • So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a desultory way among his books.   (source)
  • desultory conversation characteristic of that kind of party
  • Presently the men drifted out to the chip pile, where they lingered a while in desultory talk.†   (source)
  • The conversation was desultory, and the ride uneventful, until we came to the descent of Morne Kabrit, the view opening below us of the once fertile and now alkalized Cul-de-Sac Plain and beyond it Port-au-Prince.†   (source)
  • Jace hadn't eaten much, picking through his carton of sesame noodles in a desultory fashion before tossing it aside and flinging himself down onto the blanket, staring up at the sky.†   (source)
  • I put on my other jogging suit, the cerise one, and do some desultory stretching exercises on Jon's floor.†   (source)
  • Our pep rallies invariably ended when Mrs. Brown's large head would peer into the window and flash disapproving, desultory glances at me and the kids.†   (source)
  • And there is one helicopter, a mammoth twin-engine jet number, kind of a flying bathtub festooned with guns and missiles, sitting right in the middle of the bullseye, all of its lights on, engine whining, rotors spinning desultorily.†   (source)
  • He groped for the brush she had dropped, caught it with his fingers, and began to scrub himself desultorily.†   (source)
  • Deo followed the events, desultorily.†   (source)
  • There the old codger who had first greeted me drowsed behind the desk, mooning over the waiting room's midday desuetude.†   (source)
  • The conference broke up after a few more suggestions and a little desultory conversation.†   (source)
  • The slates flew off and shattered themselves with desultory crashes.†   (source)
  • She went into the bedroom, turned back her mattress and took from under it a notebook in which she had kept a desultory diary during her thirteenth year, and a square manila envelope.†   (source)
  • Cottard went his usual desultory ways, and M. Othon, the magistrate, continued to parade his menagerie.†   (source)
  • Finally, he was told to go to work and support himself: he found desultory employment as a soda-jerker, or as delivery boy for a morning paper.†   (source)
  • General Macarthur and the judge had been pacing the terrace outside, exchanging desultory comments on the political situation.†   (source)
  • Carrie followed up this desultory conversation with occasional interruptions from the Vances.†   (source)
  • Thus he had found in toil the pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training.†   (source)
  • They talked in a desultory fashion until it grew dark.†   (source)
  • His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description.†   (source)
  • The incessant chatter of the morning dwindled now to desultory remarks.†   (source)
  • The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phoebe something of his history.†   (source)
  • In ten minutes the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with.†   (source)
  • In a desultory way he had read a good deal of philosophy, and he looked forward with delight to the leisure of the next few months.†   (source)
  • Conversation, which had been desultory, and such as any miners or campers might have indulged in, gradually diminished to a word here and there, and finally ceased.†   (source)
  • V. In the hot night desultory students wandered up to the door of the lecture-hall, scanned the modest Sondelius poster, and ambled away.†   (source)
  • Suddenly her expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.†   (source)
  • Our client appeared to have taken fresh heart at the little glimpse of hope which had been presented to him, and he even broke into a desultory chat with me over his business affairs.†   (source)
  • She wiped him in a desultory fashion, and went upstairs, returning immediately with his shifting-trousers.†   (source)
  • After that, for a time, succeeded desultory shots; and then they ceased under long, thundering fire from heavier guns.†   (source)
  • Whatever had happened had happened, and while the intruders picked themselves up, the crowds of Hindus began a desultory move back into the town.†   (source)
  • It was a restless and sneaking pack of animals, thought Helen; she was glad after the chorus ended and with a few desultory, spiteful yelps the coyotes went away.†   (source)
  • Passing the evening, therefore, in a desultory waiting about the town wherein he avoided the precincts of every cloister and hall, because he could not bear to behold them, he repaired to the tavern bar while the hundred and one strokes were resounding from the Great Bell of Cardinal College, a coincidence which seemed to him gratuitous irony.†   (source)
  • Then they spoke of other things--the desultory talk of those who have been fighting to reach one another, and whose reward is to rest quietly in each other's arms.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • Conversation lagged after that, except for desultory remarks, and presently Dale bade the girls good night and left them.†   (source)
  • Philip saw several fellows with a desultory, timid look dawdling around, and surmised that, like himself, they were there for the first time.†   (source)
  • That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have been predicted of him.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • He spent years and years in desultory studies, undertakings, and meditations; he began to evince considerable indifference to social forms and observances.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence a fatigue.†   (source)
  • A few, led by the phantoms of hope, and ambitious of sudden affluence, sought the mines of the virgin territory; but by far the greater portion of the emigrants were satisfied to establish themselves along the margins of the larger water-courses, content with the rich returns that the generous, alluvial, bottoms of the rivers never fail to bestow on the most desultory industry.†   (source)
  • Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will.†   (source)
  • While the desultory conversation just related had been carried on in subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the current within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles being used merely to preserve the desired direction and proper positions.†   (source)
  • "I occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw in my life."†   (source)
  • She entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still sought for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the company took their departure.†   (source)
  • And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall.†   (source)
  • The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a high number—a region where the extension of the city began to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one), and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the gutter.†   (source)
  • The conversation now grew desultory, and was drawn out, until the elder sister had extracted from the younger every fact that the feeble faculties of the latter permitted her to retain, and to communicate.†   (source)
  • The consequence of this desultory kind of priesthood was, as we have already intimated, a great diversity of opinion on the more abstruse points of faith.†   (source)
  • Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them.†   (source)
  • Whatever it was, it simmered to some purpose, for he grew more and more discontented with his desultory life, began to long for some real and earnest work to go at, soul and body, and finally came to the wise conclusion that everyone who loved music was not a composer.†   (source)
  • She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day-schools by desultory starts, during three or four years.†   (source)
  • To mend the matter, Hamlet's aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced.†   (source)
  • The two young persons, after spending an hour on the river, strolled back to the house and perceived Lord Warburton sitting under the trees and engaged in conversation, of which even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Touchett.†   (source)
  • * The author has no better apology for interrupting the interest of a work of fiction by these desultory dialogues than that they have reference to facts.†   (source)
  • The discourse now became exceedingly desultory, touching principally, however, on the probabilities of an invasion, and the best means of meeting it.†   (source)
  • His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.†   (source)
  • It would be useless to relate more than the substance of the desultory dialogue that followed, in which the Indian manifested no little management, in endeavoring to recover the ground lost under the influence of surprise.†   (source)
  • My poor life and heart, how weak I am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's presence.†   (source)
  • She received him in a little parlour, which was precisely the parlour he had expected: a small unspeckled bower, ornamented with a desultory foliage of tissue-paper, and with clusters of glass drops, amid which—to carry out the analogy—the temperature of the leafy season was maintained by means of a cast-iron stove, emitting a dry blue flame, and smelling strongly of varnish.†   (source)
  • Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her husband's past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of processional.†   (source)
  • But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished.†   (source)
  • In these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's.†   (source)
  • Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political—as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and become rampant—was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members of Mr. Brooke's own family.†   (source)
  • This was the opening of another long and desultory conversation, in which the probability of Jasper's guilt or innocence was argued pro and con, until both the Sergeant and his brother-in-law had nearly reasoned themselves into settled convictions in favor of the first, while their companion grew sturdier and sturdier in his defence of the accused, and still more fixed in his opinion of his being unjustly charged with treachery.†   (source)
  • There is no saying where this desultory conversation would have led the worthy couple, had not the men, who were stamping the snow off their feet on the little plat form before the door, suddenly ceased their occupation, and entered the bar-room.†   (source)
  • She did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat.†   (source)
  • Military precision succeeded to the desultory proceedings of border men, and when a hasty and frugal breakfast was taken, the party began its movement towards the shore with a regularity and order that prevented noise or confusion.†   (source)
  • A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching the master's face almost as tenderly as the master took in the still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other gentlemen.†   (source)
  • As a matter of course, the provincials were generally the most expert marksmen; and after a desultory trial of half an hour it was necessarily conceded that a youth who had been born in the colony of New York, and who coming of Dutch extraction, was the most expert of all who had yet tried their skill.†   (source)
  • The day was cool and rather lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck, and the watery sunshine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, washing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache of antiquity was keenest.†   (source)
  • Judith now entered into a desultory discourse with Deerslayer, in which the girl betrayed her growing interest in the young man; an interest that his simplicity of mind and her decision of character, sustained as it was by the consciousness awakened by the consideration her personal charms so universally produced, rendered her less anxious to conceal than might otherwise have been the case.†   (source)
  • During this operation Richard kept up a desultory dialogue with the different domestics, occasionally throwing out a remark to the Judge concerning the deer; but as his conversation at such moments was much like an accompaniment on a piano, a thing that is heard without being attended to, we will not undertake the task of recording his diffuse discourse, The instant that Remarkable Pettibone had executed her portion of the labor in illuminating, she returned to a position near…†   (source)
  • …at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant.†   (source)
  • She had indeed many disappointments, and London at large suffered from her vivid remembrance of the strong points of the American civic idea; but she made the best of its dingy dignities and only heaved an occasional sigh and uttered a desultory "Well!" which led no further and lost itself in retrospect.†   (source)
  • They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be silent.†   (source)
  • The storm wore away as desultorily as it had come, and the long night set in.†   (source)
  • After my interview with Leonora I went desultorily into Edward's gun-room.†   (source)
  • But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling up behind her.†   (source)
  • The consequence is, that many words must fall into desuetude, and others must be brought into use.†   (source)
  • "You look tired and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.†   (source)
  • "Why don't I?" said Bathsheba, desultorily.†   (source)
  • The Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily.†   (source)
  • The commonwealth fell, the loan bank closed its coffers and its books on a sensible loss, the rules of life which he had drawn about himself fell into desuetude.†   (source)
  • I, as I said, was sitting in the deep chair, Leonora was standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the window-blind cord desultorily round and round.†   (source)
  • They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered her.†   (source)
  • Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own.†   (source)
  • The rustlers continued on the trail, firing desultorily, till Silvermane so far distanced them that even the necessary lapse into a walk in the red sand placed him beyond range when they arrived at the strip.†   (source)
  • And long afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the ritual pretence of an arrangement) of her cattleyas had quite fallen into desuetude, the metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted into a simple verb which they would employ without a thought of its original meaning when they wished to refer to the act of physical possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor possesses nothing), survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long forgotten custom from which it sprang.†   (source)
  • Gradually, the staircase that led to the garret, and even the passage-way to the staircase, were avoided by every one in the house, from every one fearing to speak of it, and the legend was gradually falling into desuetude.†   (source)
  • While the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus Eustacia's face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toe unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet.†   (source)
  • Mr. Casaubon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the right place, and avoided looking at anything documentary as far as possible, without showing disregard or impatience; mindful that this desultoriness was associated with the institutions of the country, and that the man who took him on this severe mental scamper was not only an amiable host, but a landholder and custos rotulorum.†   (source)
  • They had gone two or three miles in the moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig concerning the fair, farming, Oak's usefulness to them both, and other indifferent subjects, when Boldwood said suddenly and simply— "Mrs.†   (source)
  • What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30 years did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend?†   (source)
  • War, therefore, would be desultory and predatory.†   (source)
  • As for the latter, one was sleeping soundly and the other lying awake occupied with his desultory thoughts, when daylight came to them bringing with it the desire to rise; for the lazy down was never a delight to Don Quixote, victor or vanquished.†   (source)
  • …solution), the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality.†   (source)
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