They hadn’t gone back, a decision that Bennie now regretted; “doing whatever” had led to desultory afternoons, often cut short by Chris’s announcement that he had homework.

She had wandered through these days desultorily, enjoying the odd mix of memories and emotions that playfully showed their shadows and vanished again.

carrying on a desultory affair with a porno vendor

They’d join our table, hoisting one butt cheek onto the stool as if unsure whether to stay or go and chuck a desultory chip or two onto their box, emitting a sigh of defeat.

Sexual activity was ongoing, occasionally fervent, but usually desultory or mechanical or dutiful.

He was also carrying on a desultory conversation with someone on the other end of the telephone

These editors asking you to rip the yarn never talk about politics beyond a possible desultory nod toward wanting stories from writers of “diverse backgrounds.” They do not talk about voice or literary style.

The talk became desultory, I offered to make tea, everyone was pleased that the meeting was going to end.

Reading in my admittedly desultory way across the centuries

An eerie festivity permeated Vernazza, a mix of riotous laughter and desultory music

‘in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton’

He was a desultory student.

I locked myself in all the same, forced down the alcoholic syrup, and worked desultorily on the Reunion Speech.

the braying of burros and the desultory tinkling of bells

They talked now in tones which recognized those of the other, and treated with accordingly, desultory tones and cursory remarks which might come close upon but never touch the eventuality which both appeared to await.

Most of the desultory courses that I've taken in literature have had a peculiar snobbism about them.

Romanian cinema has the special power of finding the murkiest, most desultory way to film petty squabbles and bureaucratic nightmares

Instead, they threw parties that followed a rigid script: first the guys would watch porn while the girls chatted among themselves. When the groups did interact, the guys would make a desultory show of chivalrous ardor, rolling their eyes at one another when they could without the girls noticing