divagation

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di·va·gate

(dī′və-gāt′, dĭv′ə-)

intr.v. di·va·gat·ed, di·va·gat·ing, di·va·gates

1. To wander or drift about.

2. To ramble; digress.

[Late Latin dīvagārī, dīvagāt- : Latin dī-, dis-, apart; see dis- + Latin vagārī, to wander (from vagus, wandering).]

di′va·ga′tion n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

divagation

the act of digressing; wandering off the subject.

divagation

noun

An instance of digressing:

aside, deviation, digression, divergence, divergency, excursion, excursus, irrelevancy, parenthesis, tangent.

References in classic literature ?

Let us be set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation, and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.

View in context

Wandering the labyrinth of the admiral's mental processes, he would stray into areas of divagation where wiles seemed to double back on themselves in self-defeating loops, a Byzantine legerdemain which brought to light nothing, nothing at all, save the suspicion that Canaris practised, like conjuring, a specious magic.

MORNING SERIAL; The Element of Water

(9) Unsurprisingly, it can be difficult to identify a structure or organizing principle beneath so much divagation. Faced with the narrative equivalent of an unbridled and overwhelming natural space, the reader's reaction to Montalbetti's novel is much the same as it would be to a boundless expanse of physical space.

CHRISTINE MONTALBETTI'S "PETITE COMMUNAUTE" IN EXPERIENCE DE LA CAMPAGNE

Bega River springs from Poiana Ruscaa Mountains, under Pades Peak (1359 m), from an altitude of 1150 m, discharging into Tisa River, near Titel locality, found on the current territory of Serbia where it collects its tributaries from Poiana Ruscaa Mountains, Lipova Piedmont, the pied mountainous, and divagation field of Banat that are summing up a length of 176 km and a surface of 2675 [km.sup.2] on the territory of Romania (almost 1.12% from the total surface) [10].

Water Pollution and Water Quality Assessment of Major Transboundary Rivers from Banat (Romania)

Everything turned quiet, and after a sweeping exordium, and as a calculated divagation, the author went through the human knowledges; but clad in such seduction, but irradiating such novelty, but bedizened in such logical language, so uplifted with vivid color, that we treaded from surprise to surprise, as if we were in an excursion to the infinite through paths seeded with flowers ...

Lost Poets / Lost Poems / Found Poems: The Case of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro

If this departure from his traditional subjects is a hint of a new direction, or a mere momentary divagation, remains to be seen.

Roger San Miguel celebrates 'Seasons of Life' 2

A dreamy divagation is what Bishop said, which in theory explains all

The Pall of a Past World

Former Al-Azhar University President Ahmed Omar Hashim told Daily News Egypt on Monday "atheism is divagation from realities.

Noun	1.	divagation - a message that departs from the main subject digression, excursus, parenthesis, aside subject matter, content, message, substance - what a communication that is about something is about
	2.	divagation - a turning aside (of your course or attention or concern); "a diversion from the main highway"; "a digression into irrelevant details"; "a deflection from his goal" digression, diversion, deflexion, deviation, deflection turning, turn - the act of changing or reversing the direction of the course; "he took a turn to the right" red herring - any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue