SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
cursory
adjective
Hasty and not attentive to detail.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Hasty and superficial
Closest synonyms
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topBrief need not mean careless; cursory suggests that important detail received little attention.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See cursory in use
A cursory glance at the map was insufficient for the unfamiliar route.
A small gallery asked volunteers to review labels for a student exhibition. Jules was a discerning reader who noticed subtle differences between confident description and unsupported interpretation. His astute suggestion was to compare each label with the artist's own notes. A cursory glance could catch a missing title, but it would not reveal every mismatch in the wording.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license