With neither plan nor purpose

Usage examples of desultory.

The Champs Elysees were full of the late afternoon sunlight, and we sauntered slowly, criticising the occupants of the various carriages rolling up to the great arch of Napoleon, and arguing in a broken, desultory way on our usual subject of talk--literature.

This desultory campaigning in Normandy was little more than a postscriptum, an afterthought, a means of filling in the interim between what was past and what was to come, and as yet unrevealed.

Covenry worked the hoe in desultory fashion, frowning at the tiny sprouts of threadleaf and hensfoot poking up in the rows of cabbages and beets.

Above the treetopsthe sky was split with veinlike flashes of lightning but the lightning must havebeen miles away for thunder came belatedly, a low desultory muttering.

Above the treetops the sky was split with veinlike flashes of lightning but the lightning must have been miles away for thunder came belatedly, a low desultory muttering.

Numerous desultory attacks culminated in a fierce skirmish at Quaggafontein on August 31st, in which the column had sixty casualties.

Sally made a few desultory attempts at cataloguing and filing, but these never lasted more than an hour or two and then she was back at the cavern.

Now, counterbattery fire from the walls had become desultory, the dwindling number of losses from gun crews mostly being the result of long-range sniping with big bore wall-mounted matchlock calivers, but there seemed a dearth of notable marksmen within the city, for hits were rare, though the inch-or-more-in-diameter balls were almost certain to be the death of anyone so unfortunate as to be caught in the path of one.

Some desultory fighting ensued which achieved no end, and was chiefly remarkable for the excellent behaviour of the Colonials, who showed that they were the equals of the Regulars in gallantry and their superiors in the tactics which such a country requires.

The gunmen were still firing--he could hear the crack of their rifles and the thud of bullets hitting the log--but their attack was more desultory now.

The loyalists, encouraged by the progress of Prevost, and the notorious inefficiency of the Whigs, were now gathering in formidable bodies, in various quarters, operating in desultory bands, or crowding to swell the columns of the British army.

Men ran their hands over her breasts, teasing at her nipples with desultory interest.

Advancing along the road, in the immediate track of one of these desultory and inexplicable whirlwinds, was a man on horseback.

In the desultory talk which went on during the supper, I found in my travelling companions decorum, propriety, wit, and the manners of persons accustomed to good society.

At Casco Bay, they met a large body of Indians, whom they routed after a desultory fight of six hours.