Word info Synonyms Antonyms

perfunctory

Speech parts

1. perfunctory - Adjective

2. perfunctory - Adjective Satellite

Meaning

Done merely to get rid of a duty; performed mechanically and as a thing of rote; done in a careless and superficial manner; characterized by indifference; as, perfunctory admonitions.

Hence: Mechanical; indifferent; listless; careless.

Source: Webster's dictionary

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Phrases with the word

Examples

Putting all of my time In learning to care And a bucket of rhymes I threw up somewhere Want a locket of who Made me lose my perfunctory view Of all that is around And of all that I do. Rufus Wainwright

Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary. Ivy Compton-Burnett

That is all there is to it. No doubts, no discussion of earlier affairs, no to-ing and fro-ing, no physical experiment beyond a kiss, none of the complex voodoo which is thought necessary in even the most perfunctory modern novel to clap two ninnies together. Robertson Davies

There are times when the emotions are so clamorous and the rational working of the mind so perfunctory that there is no telling where the actual leaves off and the images of fantasy begin. Mervyn Peake

There is also something more [...] because as humans we possess, call it reason, spirit, consciousness, what ever, it's a numinous element beyond the perfunctory form following function. Vanna Bonta

When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're 'well-placed to weather the storm', I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. Daniel Hannan

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