It's the word of the day for July 3rd.

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seas apply. Today's word is desultory. Spell D-E-S-U-L-T-O-R-Y. Desultory is an adjective. It's a formal word used to describe

something that lacks a plan or purpose or that occurs without regularity. It can also describe

something unconnected to a main subject or something that is disappointing in progress,

performance, or quality. Here's the

word used in a sentence from the New England Review by Justin St. Germain. One other guy was in the

waiting room when I walked in. As we sat there past the scheduled time of our appointments, we struck

up a desultory conversation. Like me, he'd been in the hiring

process for years, had driven down from Albuquerque the night before, and seemed nervous. He asked

if I'd done any research on the polygraph. I said no, and asked him the same question. He said no.

We were getting our first lies out of the way. The Latin adjective

desultorius was used by the ancient Romans to describe a circus performer called a desultor,

whose trick was to leap from horse to horse without stopping. English speakers took the idea of

the desultorius performer and coined the word desultory to describe that which figuratively jumps from one thing to another without regularity and showing no sign of a plan or purpose.

Both desultor and desultorious, by the way, come from the Latin verb salire, meaning to leap.

A desultory conversation leaps from one topic to another,

and a desultory comment is one that jumps away from the topic at hand.

Meanwhile, a desultory performance is one resulting from an implied lack of steady-focused effort.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakalowski.

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