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From Latindēsultōrius(“hasty, casual, superficial”), from dēsultor(“a circus rider who jumped from one galloping horse to another”), from dēsiliō(“jump down”), from dē(“down”) + saliō(“jump, leap”).
To mend the matter, Hamlet's aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced.
2005, Tony Judt, “The Coming of the Cold War”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN:
The Benelux Customs Union came into effect on January 1st 1948, and there followed desultory conversations between the Benelux countries, France and Italy over projects to extend such cooperation across a larger space.
‘Your desultory twenties,’ my mother calls my lost time, trying to make it sound reasonable and fun, but it started before I was twenty and lasted much longer.