Modifies a noun

• fashion: For ten minutes the firing, in a desultory fashion, went on.

• conversation: We never really played together, or had any more than desultory conversations.

• way: He worked for the Daily Express, and studied arts and crafts in a desultory way.

• attempt: He makes a desultory attempt to clean off the worst of the unspeakable something left over from the party.

• fighting: Here they spent the next two years in desultory fighting.

• discussion: Thus is was during 21 minutes of desultory discussion in 1994, a committee of 14 MPs nodded through the Units of Measurement Regulations.

Modifying Another Word

• rather: The book is not always dynamic or funny, and sometimes García Márquez just narrates the rather desultory days he just lived.

• somewhat: This is definitely a Modernist product: fragmentary, somewhat desultory, aware of its belatedness.

• fairly: I'd been to Frontier Land in Morecombe, it was fairly desultory but at the back was an optimistically named House Of Fun.

Used with adjective complement

• become: After some time his output of talk became more desultory as he continued to fail to make progress.