The tradition exists most notably in the ceremonies of arranged marriages and the perfunctory visits some of Mr. Upadhyay's characters pay to the city's temples.
White House officials have already said Mr. Bush plans no reconciliation with the leaders of France and Germany, beyond what they call a perfunctory "courtesy visit" to President Jacques Chirac during the summit meeting, to be held in the French town of Évian.
The Democrats' long tradition of perfunctory church visits and get-out-the-vote rallies anchored by smiles, waves, and bones thrown can seem, in hindsight, underlied by a cynical subtext: "Where else are you going to go?" (An inverse of Trump's famous "What do you have to lose?").
This should include support offered to all those with a diagnosis and the end of perfunctory, slapdash homecare visits.
But the visits are perfunctory, and the authors offer no systematic account of the trade-offs the brain must make among goals that differ in their likelihood of success, their time horizons and their evolutionary impact.
Probably assuming I wouldn't take him up on it, he once again extended a perfunctory invitation for me to visit.
I receive a single somewhat-more-than-perfunctory hug on my first visit to Sexton's office.
I was cautious because I remembered the perfunctory gift-suggestion sites I visited last year, which tended to recommend impersonal items, like macadamia nuts in a tin, that one would find in an airport gift shop.
In what is known as Case Three, the co-investigating judges conducted only perfunctory interviews of witnesses and visits to alleged crime sites and did not inform the potential defendants, both accused of being senior Khmer Rouge military commanders, according to a detailed report released Tuesday by the Open Society Justice Initiative, an independent legal and human rights advocacy group.
I learned that my "office visit" consisted of a perfunctory conversation I had with the doctor while I was wearing a paper gown, lying on an operating table and in a fog, minutes before he did the deed.
