desultory

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Then again, it’s all too easy to be distracted from the desultory happenings on stage.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 14, 2026

Last night he did an obscure X interview show and seemed desultory and depressed.

From Salon • Sep. 4, 2024

The lobby bar at the town’s only hotel—usually so desultory on non–parents’ weekend weekends that it closed around 8—was jammed with visitors from surrounding states.

From Slate • Apr. 8, 2024

“Napoleon,” Ridley Scott’s clamorously eventful but oddly desultory new epic, wrings its own variation on that idea: Here is a man whose love for a woman fuels and finally destroys his delusions of greatness.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 22, 2023

With a desultory nod of his bored and sleepy head, the Level Crossing Divinity conjured up beggars with bandages, men with trays selling pieces of fresh coconut, parippu vadas on banana leaves.

From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy