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• a  (music) marked by or composed of disconnected parts or sounds; cut short crisply
  staccato applause
  a staccato command
  staccato notes
• r  separating the notes; in music
  play this staccato, please

• When he asks questions, and he will, in staccato bursts, you need to respond with alacrity.
• Above the heavy tread of nations on the march, above the staccato uproar of the battlefields, only a few men of peace were heard in 1942.
• Speaking before a packed lecture hall in his staccato-like voice, punctuated by rapid inhales, he cast a spell, making each listener believe he was speaking only to him or her.

• disconnected

• legato

News & Articles

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• Bette's bravura breakthru
  It’s nearly 80 years since the gale force known as Bette Davis seized our attention as Mildred, the cheap Cockney slut who tortured masochistic Leslie Howard in OF HUMAN BONDAGE and became a star. “I wipe. My. Mouth! Ev-er-y time. I. Kiss. You. I. Wipe. My. Mouth!” Davis sneered, furiously taunting poor Howard, her staccato speech a stream of invective that still shocks, excites, mesmerizes ...
  June 6, 2013 - Boston Herald

Quotes

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• Alan Gottlieb in CNSNews.com
  Since Monday's shootings, Gottlieb said the Second Amendment Foundation has "been forced to respond to staccato attacks from gun control organizations whose goal is to destroy the Second Amendment."
• Christopher Buckley in San Francisco Chronicle
  Buckley wrote of Mitchell's "tendency to laugh unpleasantly. It came out as a high-pitched staccato burst, a sort of cackle. One observer likened it to the sound geese make when being force-fed. He had done it once or twice during the presidential...
• William Shatner in Money Morning
  Curiously for Shatner, however, it's original "Star Trek" series veteran Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), and not the irrepressible Shatner - described by one writer recently as the "master of the strained staccato delivery" who landed a role in the...