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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Desultory \Des"ul*to*ry\, adjective [L. desultorius, fr. desultor a leaper, fr. desilire, desultum, to leap down; de + salire to leap. See {Saltation}.]
1. Leaping or skipping about. [Obs.]
I shot at it [a bird], but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. --Gilbert White.
2. Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection; without logical sequence; disconnected; immethodical; aimless; as, desultory minds. --Atterbury.
He [Goldsmith] knew nothing accurately; his reading had been desultory. --Macaulay.
3. Out of course; by the way; as a digression; not connected with the subject; as, a desultory remark.
Syn: Rambling; roving; immethodical; discursive; inconstant; unsettled; cursory; slight; hasty; loose.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
desultory
adjective: marked by lack of definite plan or regularity or purpose; jumping from one thing to another; "desultory thoughts"; "the desultory conversation characteristic of cocktail parties"
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
211 Moby Thesaurus words for "desultory": aberrant, aberrative, adrift, afloat, aimless, alternating, amorphous, broken, by the way, capricious, careening, casual, catchy, changeable, changeful, chaotic, choppy, circuitous, dancing, dangerous, departing, designless, deviable, deviant, deviating, deviative, deviatory, devious, digressive, disarticulated, disconnected, discontinuous, discursive, disjunct, disordered, disorderly, disorganized, dispersed, disproportionate, dizzy, eccentric, episodic, errant, erratic, excursive, fast and loose, fickle, fitful, flickering, flickery, flicky, flighty, flitting, fluctuating, fluttering, fluttery, formless, freakish, frivolous, giddy, gratuitous, guttering, halting, haphazard, hazardous, herky-jerky, heteroclite, hit-or-miss, immethodical, impetuous, impulsive, inchoate, incoherent, inconsistent, inconstant, indecisive, indirect, indiscriminate, infirm, insecure, insubstantial, intermittent, intermitting, irregular, irresolute, irresponsible, jerky, labyrinthine, loose, lurching, maundering, mazy, meandering, meaningless, mercurial, misshapen, moody, nonsymmetrical, nonsystematic, nonuniform, on-again-off-again, orderless, out-of-the-way, patchy, perilous, planetary, planless, precarious, promiscuous, provisional, purposeless, rambling, random, restless, risky, rough, roving, scatterbrained, scrappy, senseless, serpentine, shaky, shapeless, shifting, shifty, shuffling, slippery, snaky, snatchy, spasmatic, spasmic, spasmodic, spastic, spineless, spluttering, sporadic, spotty, sputtering, sputtery, staggering, straggling, straggly, stray, swerving, systemless, temporary, tentative, ticklish, treacherous, turning, twisting, unaccountable, unarranged, uncertain, unclassified, unconsidered, uncontrolled, undependable, undirected, undisciplined, unequal, uneven, unfaithworthy, unfixed, ungraded, unjoined, unmethodical, unmetrical, unordered, unorganized, unplanned, unpredictable, unregular, unreliable, unrestrained, unrhythmical, unsettled, unsolid, unsorted, unsound, unstable, unstable as water, unstaid, unsteadfast, unsteady, unsubstantial, unsure, unsymmetrical, unsystematic, untrustworthy, ununiform, vacillating, vagrant, vague, variable, veering, vicissitudinary, vicissitudinous, volatile, wandering, wanton, wavering, wavery, wavy, wayward, whimsical, winding, wishy-washy, wobbling, wobbly, zigzag
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