1894, Thomas Hardy, Life's Little Ironies, ch. 6:When at dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each.
1901, Edith Wharton, "The Recovery" in Crucial Instances:Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that robs even new bonnets of their bloom.
2006 Nov. 30, David Cohen, "A Bit Nasty to Women, But Respectful to Dishware," New York Sun (retrieved 28 June 2011)His hard-core images are delivered with a ho-hum perfunctoriness that often enervates his surfaces. . . . His orgies are inert.
