Adjective : desultory conversation. ,a desultory remark.    From Dictionary.com. 

Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Woodlanders] Reference

The same Celtic desultoriness characterized all the rest of his life, though it could not thwart his genius.    From Wordnik.com.  [A History of English Literature] Reference

He went back to the ‘Red Lion’ with the manner and movement of a man who after a lifetime of desultoriness had at last found something to do.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Hand of Ethelberta] Reference

But it brings vividly before us the failures and weaknesses in our work; for instance, the desultoriness of our teaching, which of necessity stultifies the results that under better conditions would be sure to follow.    From Wordnik.com.  [Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary] Reference

Sloth is in the air, and a decorous desultoriness pervades humanity.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Green Carnation] Reference

But he was prepared to endure the charge of desultoriness with equanimity.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1] Reference

She was particularly fond of finishing up her daily desultoriness in that manner.    From Wordnik.com.  [Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs] Reference

It would have been difficult to make the old man see any virtue in such desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Villa Elsa A Story of German Family Life] Reference

What strikes us in his course of study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Youth of Goethe] Reference

Meanwhile, opportunities must be seized at the risk of a reputation for desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Thomas Henry Huxley A Character Sketch] Reference

I must seize opportunities as they come, at the risk of the reputation of desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1] Reference

Margaret's views had become his own, as to the desultoriness of the life he had hitherto led.    From Wordnik.com.  [Deerbrook] Reference

Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is the charm of his songs: "I take up one or another," he says in a letter to.    From Wordnik.com.  [Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy] Reference

It was snowing with a fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, without ever achieving whiteness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Woodlanders] Reference

To present that history in the form of annals would be to introduce unavoidably definite elements of incoherence and desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [History of the University of Virginia, 1819-1919] Reference

But this apparent desultoriness has been necessary, for I knew not for what branch of science I should eventually have to declare myself.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1] Reference

I wish here to make a plea for desultoriness and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness of the man who reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Untroubled Mind] Reference

After the only competent leader had been snatched from the Christians by an angry fate, the weakness and desultoriness of the others had destroyed the fruits of conquest.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06 (From Barbarossa to Dante)] Reference

Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is the charm of his songs: "I take up one or another," he says in a letter to Thompson, "just as the bee of the moment buzzes in my bonnet-lug.".    From Wordnik.com.  [November Boughs ; from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose] Reference

Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is the charm of his songs: “I take up one or another, ” he says in a letter to Thompson, “just as the bee of the moment buzzes in my bonnet-lug.    From Wordnik.com.  [Robert Burns as Poet and Person. November Boughs] Reference

The habit of desultoriness, which has been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation which might possibly be of use later.    From Wordnik.com.  [Pushing to the Front] Reference

A certain degree of uniformity is the invariable characteristic of the earlier productions of art; but here is as much desultoriness and incoherence, as can well he possible in a work that makes any pretensions to a plan.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lives of the English Poets]

Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr. Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers's mind dwell critically on the subject nearest the hearts of all.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Woodlanders] Reference

Sordello contains many beautiful things, but by omitting the necessary steps in argument, and by speaking of one thing allusively in terms of another, and by a profound desultoriness of thought, the poet produces a blurred and tangled impression.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Upton Letters] Reference

The rags, of course, fall to pieces, and are tossed into the waste-paper basket, and thus a habit of desultoriness and of abstention from books worth styling books grows and grows, like a noxious and paralysing parasite, over the American intellect.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lost Leaders] Reference

So, if they are fortunate, they may rid themselves of the vagueness and uncertainty of life, until all the multitude of details which go to make up life lose their desultoriness and their lack of meaning, and they may find themselves no longer the subjects of physical or nervous exhaustion.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Untroubled Mind] Reference

He was presumably a bachelor -- a man of family ties, however relaxed, though he might have been as often absent from home would not have been as regularly present in the same place -- and there was about him a boundless desultoriness which renewed Garnett's conviction that there is no one on earth as idle as an American who is not busy.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Hermit and the Wild Woman] Reference

The -but" lingered in his mind, though, even as they talked, with increasing desultoriness as they climbed through the dark, scented forest.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Breath of Snow and Ashes]

27+ nations, comes across as threadbare and hollow, as all we can show up with at present is disunity, deadlock, and desultoriness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Agonist - thoughtful, global, timely] Reference

Apparent desultoriness of his earlier work.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3] Reference