divagation
nounEtymology Nominalization of divagate (from the Latin verb divagare) + -ion (from the Latin suffix -io).
1
Straying off from a course or way.
- It was after the complete revelation that he understood the romantic innuendoes with which his childhood had been surrounded, and of which he had never caught the meaning; they having seemed but part and parcel of the habitual and promiscuous divagations of his too constructive companion. When it came over him that, for years, she had made a fool of him, to himself and to others, he could have beaten her, for grief and shame […]1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.:
- But this was a divagation, and he pulled himself back to the askings of the moment1905, Francis Lynde, A Fool for Love, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, page 52:
2
Medicine, Sciences Incoherent or wandering speech and thought.
- Related terms
- divagate