What's the difference between desultory and random?

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.

Random


Definition:

  • (n.) Force; violence.
  • (n.) A roving motion; course without definite direction; want of direction, rule, or method; hazard; chance; -- commonly used in the phrase at random, that is, without a settled point of direction; at hazard.
  • (n.) Distance to which a missile is cast; range; reach; as, the random of a rifle ball.
  • (n.) The direction of a rake-vein.
  • (a.) Going at random or by chance; done or made at hazard, or without settled direction, aim, or purpose; hazarded without previous calculation; left to chance; haphazard; as, a random guess.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Multiple stored energy levels were randomly tested and the percent successful defibrillation was plotted against the stored energy, and the raw data were fit by logistic regression.
  • (2) Twenty-seven patients were randomized to receive either 50 mg stanozolol or placebo intramuscularly 24 h before operation, followed by a 6 week course of either 5 mg stanozolol or placebo orally, twice daily.
  • (3) The effects of sessions, individual characteristics, group behavior, sedative medications, and pharmacological anticipation, on simple visual and auditory reaction time were evaluated with a randomized block design.
  • (4) We have addressed the effect of late intensification with autologous bone marrow transplantation on SCLC through a randomized clinical trial.
  • (5) However, survival was closely related to the severity of the illness at the time of randomization and was not altered by shunting.
  • (6) Statistically significant differences were found mainly in the randomized trial, where during the first and second years, respectively, adenoidectomy subjects had 47% and 37% less time with otitis media than control subjects and 28% and 35% fewer suppurative (acute) episodes than control subjects.
  • (7) In a random sample of 1,000 neonates from a Delhi Hospital the incidence of jaundice was 53% and of hyperbilirubinaemia (HB) 6%.
  • (8) Febrile reactions were not distributed randomly among the patients; those with respiratory tract infection experienced more febrile reactions during periods with infection than during periods without.
  • (9) Five days later, the animals were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: Group 1 received intracranial implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 2 received intraperitoneal implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 3 received serial intraperitoneal injections of dexamethasone; and Group 4 received sham treatment.
  • (10) In a randomized double-blind study, 40 patients with coronary heart disease received intravenously either 0.025 mg nitroglycerin or placebo.
  • (11) A prospective randomized trial was conducted at Srinagarind and Khon Kaen hospitals.
  • (12) Quantitative measurements of image contrast were carried out for B-mode images of anechoic spheres (cysts) embedded in a random scattering medium.
  • (13) The distribution of the amino acid pairs, i, i + 1 in alpha-helical configurations does not differ from the random pairing.
  • (14) The authors studied 84 randomly selected participants who live in retirement communities to discover factors leading to successful completion of a wellness enhancing program.
  • (15) In 290 patients with untreated carcinoma of the bladder the deoxyribonucleic acid properties, as measured by flow cytometry, of 3 random mucosal biopsies were studied and compared to those of the exophytic tumors.
  • (16) A prospective randomized trial involving 64 patients with bleeding peptic ulcers was performed to assess the efficacy of two modalities of injection therapy.
  • (17) The relationship between technique of obtaining Papanicolaou smears, presence of endocervical cells, and rate of cervical neoplasia was studied by comparing an endocervical and ectocervical nylon brush (Bayne brush), Ayre spatula plus endocervical brush, and spatula plus cotton-tipped swab in a randomized, prospective trial involving 11,061 patients.
  • (18) One hundred and sixteen patients with advanced and metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas were randomized to treatment with combined Streptozotocin and 5-fluorouracil or combined Streptozotocin and cyclophosphamide.
  • (19) The government has blamed a clumsily worded press release for the furore, denying there would be random checks of the public.
  • (20) The haemodynamics and affecting factors of the acute random skin flap and the methods for monitoring its viability were studied.