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Leaping or skipping about. [Obs.] I shot at it [a bird], but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. Gilbert White.

In a desultory manner; without method; loosely; immethodically.

The quality of being desultory or without order or method; unconnectedness. The seeming desultoriness of my method. Boyle.

Desultory. [R.]

The state or quality of being a dilettante; the desultory pursuit of art, science, or literature.

Passing from one thing to another; ranging over a wide field; roving; digressive; desultory. "Discursive notices." De Quincey. The power he [Shakespeare] delights to show is not intense, but discursive. Hazlitt. A man rather tacit than discursive. Carlyle.

ti"tious-ness, n. He acquires a factitious propensity, he forms an incorrigible habit, of desultory reading. De Quincey.

The entrance of an enemy into a country with purposes of hostility; a sudden or desultory incursion or invasion; raid; encroachment. The loss of Shrewsbury exposed all North Wales to the daily inroads of the enemy. Clarendon. With perpetual inroads to alarm, Though inaccessible, his fatal throne. Milton.…

uantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable, study. Macaulay. Quantity of estate (Law), its time of continuance, or degree of interest, as in fee, for life, or for years. Wharton (Law Dict. ) -- Quantity of matter, in a body, its mass, as det…

A slight fight in war; a light or desultory combat between detachments from armies, or between detached and small bodies of troops.