What's the difference between cursory and desultory?

Cursory


Definition:

  • (a.) Running about; not stationary.
  • (a.) Characterized by haste; hastily or superficially performed; slight; superficial; careless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) All of these are accomplished simultaneously with a cursory survey to identify immediately life-threatening injuries and to prevent permanent disability.
  • (2) It is clear that any investigations they have conducted have been cursory.
  • (3) A cursory web search would have helped but fewer of us bother when the news is relatively inconsequential.
  • (4) A cursory glance at human history suggests otherwise.
  • (5) A cursory trawl reveals a long list of employment tribunals and strikes by low-paid workers in these outsourcing companies.
  • (6) Further, it only takes a cursory look at Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website to see that they are embroiled in a bitter and ongoing feud with Isis.
  • (7) The statements to this point only give a cursory review of the beginning (20 years) of the kinetic approach to the classification of lipoproteins and subsystems which are involved in their synthesis and metabolism.
  • (8) Morphological differences are primarily related to locomotor patterns as reflected in the degree of cursoriality displayed by bovids in different habitats.
  • (9) In the past, says Hogan, they tended only to give them a cursory glance.
  • (10) Writer Feargus O’Sullivan thinks of the presence of artists and creative workers as adding a “cursory sheen to a place’s transformation”, describing the process as “ artwashing ”.
  • (11) But it was as much their mistakes as those of Moyes that led them to Tuesday's cursory announcement .
  • (12) In this chapter, while we review in a cursory way the older findings with glucocorticoid hormones, we concentrate on the newer developments which suggest that leukocyte- and pituitary-derived ACTH and endorphins perform regulatory functions within and between the immune system and the pituitary-adrenocortical axis.
  • (13) Yes, the ad included such issues as agriculture and the environment, but only the most cursory mention.
  • (14) The UK's cursory submission to the commission is in fact based on a February 2012 report titled Creating the Conditions for Integration .
  • (15) If anyone doubts that people do not care enough about wildlife then a cursory look at the emails, tweets, letters and calls that have flooded into the RSPB in recent days will open their eyes.
  • (16) The text which has to be easily understandable, mentions: a cursory description of the clinical signs of the different decompression accidents the measures which have to be taken in each case, depending on: the moment of the emergency: after or during decompression, the presence of an insufficient decompression, or a "blow-up".
  • (17) We didn’t actually fully investigate them, we just made a cursory visit and went back to all of our keyboards looking at everybody’s emails and text messages.
  • (18) I don’t think that a cursory look at the budget is enough for people to understand what we’re really getting at.
  • (19) According to one survey, just 4% of women do this, and a cursory glance around the globe hints it is not exactly common practice elsewhere.
  • (20) This is only a cursory view of the complexities one encounters when attempting to understand women, how and why they behave the way they do, how they respond to the health care system, what some of their influences are, and what we must all do together to help them help themselves and us, to provide them with a longer, more productive, rewarding and healthy life span.

Desultory


Definition:

  • (a.) Leaping or skipping about.
  • (a.) Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection; without logical sequence; disconnected; immethodical; aimless; as, desultory minds.
  • (a.) Out of course; by the way; as a digression; not connected with the subject; as, a desultory remark.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Senior figures in the yes campaign were predicting a 60%-to-40% defeat on a desultory turnout, with one admitting: "We were providing a solution to a problem the British public did not recognise."
  • (2) Andy Burnham Burnham, or at least the Andy Burnham campaign, was making desultory calls on Thursday to test out Labour MPs to see if they were interested in serving in a Burnham shadow cabinet.
  • (3) A few desultory bands followed, performing an assortment of leftwing songs from various historical leftwing movements.
  • (4) This came as no real surprise to me; through my desultory use of Facebook over the years I have somehow accrued 362 "friends".
  • (5) Others surf the internet, update their blogs; make desultory notes; look at each others' notes.
  • (6) Cafes and restaurants typically close around dusk, with custom desultory and staff eager to get home early on less frequent public transport.
  • (7) The state was shocked with weapons, money, foreign troops and aid but with little oversight or accountability the results from a long occupation and massive amounts of foreign aid have been desultory.
  • (8) Nor did he shed any light on how he believed the decision may affect the desultory negotiating process with Tripoli that the UN and the Russians are trying, so far without much success, to advance.
  • (9) Except for scalp hair and desultory areas of sexual hair, most of man's hair follicles are vestigial.
  • (10) Bin Laden did describe the obtaining of chemical weapons as a religious duty, and al-Qaida and offshoots did make desultory efforts to build laboratories in Afghanistan and in northern Iraq .
  • (11) The yes camp, urged on by Clegg, secured a desultory 32.1%.
  • (12) But there’s a lot of toffs round here, I reckon they’ll get in again because of that.” Though even Clegg will admit victory is “a mountain to climb”, a close second, up from fourth in 2015, would help the Lib Dems test their messaging to Tory voters in preparation for seats they might be more able to win, particularly in the south-west, though the polls for the party nationally remain at a stubborn and desultory 8%.
  • (13) The series of general frequency shows: driveling 67.9%, desultory thinking 57.3%, withdrawal, broadcasting, insertion 32.7%, loosening of association, gaps, derailment 28.9%, blocking 16.5%, transitoriness, movielike thinking, double-sense thinking 12.0%.
  • (14) After a rather desultory attempt to overrun the supposed adversary, they discovered that he had claws.
  • (15) Against this desultory backdrop, it is instructive to note that in policy circles, EPR also stands for Extended Producer Responsibility , the concept that the manufacturer of a smartphone, for example, should be responsible for recycling the handset when discarded.
  • (16) The military historian and former US marine corps colonel Bing West describes these desultory battles as " groundhog wars ".
  • (17) In the nonobese group, normal subjects responded to massive hyperglycemia after rapid injection of glucose with immediate and maximal outpouring of insulin, in contrast to a desultory insulinogenic response in patients with mild diabetes, and no initial response at all in moderate diabetics.
  • (18) The Guardian's report today tells the story of volunteers who were made to pay for their own equipment and weapons, given desultory basic training, then patronised or ignored.
  • (19) And sometimes, in practice, things can be very desultory indeed.
  • (20) There are no precise figures of how many Jews left France in 2014, since France does not collect census information regarding religion and is surprisingly desultory about data regarding emigration, but it is probably in the region of around 2% of the overall Jewish population, a huge increase on all previous years.