divagation
English
Etymology
Noun of action form, from verb divagate (from the Latin verb divagare) + noun of action suffix -ion (from the Latin suffix -io).
Noun
divagation (countable and uncountable, plural divagations)
- Straying off from a course or way.
- 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima:
- 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 […]
- 1905, Francis Lynde, A Fool for Love, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, page 52:
- But this was a divagation, and he pulled himself back to the askings of the moment
- (medicine) Incoherent or wandering speech and thought.
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Noun
divagation f (plural divagations)