WORD OF THE DAY: CURSORY
adjective | KER-suh-ree
What It Means
Something described as cursory has been done or made quickly.
// We were disappointed that the mayor gave only a cursory glance at our report.
Examples of CURSORY
“After a few cursory questions … one of the owners offered me the job on the spot and I said yes without asking about the pay, which caused the other one to laugh and hit the table with his hand and promise to teach me a thing or two about the real world.” — Sarah Gilmartin, Service: A Novel, 2024
Did You Know?
Let your cursor linger long enough on our pages, and you’ll be surprised at how much you can quickly discover. Consider the entry for cursory, for example. If you surmise after a mere cursory glance that there’s not much to know about a word with a single sense (“hastily done or made”), you may want to hold your horses. There’s so much to find, including a helpful guide to choosing synonyms of cursory, such as shallow and superficial, that also describe things done with a lack of attention or care. There’s also an etymology section, where one learns that cursory was borrowed from the Medieval Latin adjective cursōrius, which described things that were swift or related to running, and which in turn comes from the Latin noun cursor, meaning “runner.” This fact may prompt you to jog over to the entries of other cursor descendants, such as cursorial (“adapted to or involving running,” as in “cursorial insects”) and, well, cursor.
Merriam Webster Dictionary
