Desultory means done without plan or steady interest. A desultory conversation, desultory efforts, poke about in a desultory way.
It suggests jumping from one thing to another and finishing none, which the Latin behind it makes vivid. A desultory attempt is half-hearted rather than merely unsuccessful.
1adjectivedesultoryDone without plan or steady interest.
“They made desultory conversation until the taxi came.”
desultory is a quality.
Latin desultorius comes from desultor, the circus rider who leapt from one galloping horse to another.
Proto-Indo-European
*sel-
Latin
dēsultōrius — hasty, casual, superficial
English, today
desultory
Built from
From Latin dēsultōrius (“hasty, casual, superficial”), from dēsultor (“a circus rider who jumped from one galloping horse to another”), from dēsiliō (“jump down”), from dē (“down”) + saliō (“jump, leap”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA