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Any part of a mathematical instrument that moves or slides backward and forward upon another part.

Cursory; hasty. [Obs.] With a cursorary eye o'erglanced the articles. Shak.

An order of running birds including the ostrich, emu, and allies; the Ratitaæ.

Adapted to running or walking, and not to prehension; as, the limbs of the horse are cursorial. See Illust. of Aves.

In a running or hasty manner; carelessly.

The quality of being cursory; superficial performance; as, cursoriness of view.

lly performed; slight; superficial; careless. Events far too important to be treated in a cursory manner. Hallam.

A forerunner; a precursor. [Obs.]

Argumentative; discursive; reasoning. [R.] Bp. Hall.

Running over slightly or in haste; cursory. [R.]

dicates its approach; a forerunner; a harbinger. Evil thoughts are the invisible, airy precursors of all the storms and tempests of the soul. Buckminster.

The position or condition of a precursor. Ruskin.

Preceding as a precursor or harbinger; indicating something to follow; as, precursory symptoms of a fever.

ood or brass, on which this projection of the sphere is made, having a movable horizon or cursor; -- formerly much used in solving some common astronomical problems.

A small, clear space in the segments of the ovum, the precursor of the nucleus.

lue lips, caused by undue cooling of the body or by nervous excitement, or forming the precursor of some constitutional disturbance, as of a fever.

The precursory symptoms of cholera.

hments, and where men meet for conversation. The coffeehouse must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It might indeed, at that time, have been not improperly called a most important political institution . . . The coffeehouses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself .…

A grallatorial bird of Europe (Cursorius cursor), remarkable for its speed in running. Sometimes, in a wider sense, applied to running birds of the Ostrich family.

To enter slightly or cursorily; to engage one's self desultorily or by the way; to partake limitedly; -- followed by in or into. "Dipped into a multitude of books." Macaulay.