a. Also 7 cursorie, cursary. [ad. L. cursōri-us of or pertaining to a runner or a race, f. cursōr-em runner: in OF. corsoire, cursoire.]
1. Running or passing rapidly over a thing or subject, so as to take no note of details; hasty, hurried, passing.
1601. Dent, Pathw. Heauen, 277. Cursory saying of a few praiers a little before death, auaileth not.
1661. J. Stephens, Procurations, 128. I had only a cursory view of it, and that chance.
1766. Goldsm., Vic. W., xviii. A traveller who stopped to take a cursory refreshment.
1857. Keble, Eucharist. Adorat., 37. Obvious to the most cursory reader of the Gospel.
1866. Rogers, Agric. & Prices, I. iii. 60. A cursory inspection shews that these statements are untrustworthy.
† 2. Moving about, travelling. Obs. rare.
1606. Proc. agst. Garnet, F (T.). Father Creswell Legier Iesuite in Spaine, Father Baldwin Legier in Flaunders … besides their Cursorie men, as Gerrard, [etc.].
1610. Rowlands, Martin Mark-all, 24. Their houses are made cursary like our Coaches with foure wheeles that may be drawne from place to place.
1650. Fuller, Pisgah, II. IV. ii. 21. Those Tribes dwelt in their Tents … in a cursory condition, only grazing their Cattel during the season.
3. Entom. Adapted for running; = CURSORIOUS.
4. In mediæval universities: a. Cursory lectures: lectures of a less formal and exhaustive character delivered, especially by bachelors, as additional to the ‘ordinary’ lectures of the authorized teachers in a faculty, and at hours not reserved for these prescribed lectures.
[The name would appear to have been first given to the lectures delivered by bachelors as part of the cursus prescribed for the licence, but to have been afterwards extended to all ‘extraordinary’ lectures.)
1841. G. Peacock, Stat. Univ. Camb., p. xliv. note 1.
1894. Rashdall, Med. Universities, vi. § 4. 426. The ‘cursory’ lectures of Paris are the ‘extraordinary’ lectures of Bologna. Ibid., 427. Vacation cursory lectures might be given at any hour. Ibid. It is probable that the term ‘cursory’ came to suggest also the more rapid and less formal manner of going over a book usually adopted at these times.
b. Cursory Bachelor: (in modern writers) a bachelor who gave cursory lectures.
