(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.
Irresolute
Definition:
(a.) Not resolute; not decided or determined; wavering; given to doubt or irresolution.
Example Sentences:
(1) The number of irresolute responses was significantly decreased following administration of diazepam, SZJ 3388 and Litoralon and was positively correlated with the TEE latency-decreasing activity of these compounds.
(2) Right-wing Catholics denounced him as irresolute on issues like Aids, the defence of Catholic schools, and political priests like Mgr Bruce Kent (who later resigned).
(3) The White House is considered irresolute on Guantánamo, lacking the force or the desire to impose a coherent policy upon the bureaucracy.
(4) At these patients we saw significantly more "valve groups", which witness to the irresolution in the instinctive motivations of behaviour.
(5) Smith and his cronies were kept in power by a combination of white redoubt solidarity in southern Africa, deep divisions among Rhodesian-African tribal groups and guerrilla movements, irresolution in London, inertia and insincerity elsewhere - and a small group of white Rhodesian, South African and British army officers, police, security men and sanctions-busters whose cunning knew no bounds.
(6) However, its influence on the development of breast cancer and cervical cancer remains irresolute pending further research.
(7) To be European is to be somehow effeminate, irresolute and, perhaps worst of all, socialist.
(8) Or are we going be profligate again, spend money we don’t have again, borrow forever, mortgage the future of children with the debts we could not pay ourselves, and consign Britain to a future of a high debt, low growth?” Describing Labour as the party of permanent fiscal irresponsibility, he said the charter would bear down on the “irresolution of politicians who lack the discipline to control public spending and deliver growth”.
(9) But these words – reconciliation and resolution – are also lies, for what I found, in the absence of reckoning for these refugees and survivors, was post-conflict irresolution.
(10) And veteran Observer readers, perhaps, may be forgiven for wondering what the Orwell of Homage to Catalonia would have said today as he surveyed such a panoply of irresolution.
(11) Harold Hobson declared that he had "never seen a Hamlet more shot through with the pale agony of irresolution."
(12) (The exhibition captioning and catalogue toy with this tactic extensively, if irresolutely, mythologically annotating every scribble and grunt: quite frankly, they're best ignored.)
(13) Many, although not all, of the challenges in communities today are informed by the irresolution of unfinished business.