Meaning of DISCURSIVE
| Pronunciation: | | di'skursiv
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- [adj] (of e.g. speech and writing) tending to depart from the main point or cover a wide range of subjects; "amusingly digressive with satirical thrusts at women's fashions among other things"; "a rambling discursive book"; "his excursive remarks"; "a rambling speech about this and that"
- [adj] (philosophy) proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather than intuition
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| | Synonyms: | | dianoetic, digressive, excursive, indirect, logical, rambling |
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| Webster's 1913 Dictionary |
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| | Definition: | | \Dis*cur"sive\, a. [Cf. F. discursif. See
{Discourse}, and cf. {Discoursive}.]
1. Passing from one thing to another; ranging over a wide
field; roving; digressive; desultory. ``Discursive
notices.'' --De Quincey.
The power he [Shakespeare] delights to show is not
intense, but discursive. --Hazlitt.
A man rather tacit than discursive. --Carlyle.
2. Reasoning; proceeding from one ground to another, as in
reasoning; argumentative.
Reason is her being, Discursive or intuitive.
--Milton.
-- {Dis*cur"sive*ly}, adv. -- {Dis*cur"sive*ness}, n.
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| Thesaurus Terms |
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| | Related Terms: | | a fortiori, a posteriori, a priori, aberrant, aberrative, aimless, ambagious, analytic, backhanded, bright, by the way, categorical, circuitous, circular, circumforaneous, conceptive, conceptual, conditional, deductive, departing, desultory, deviant, deviating, deviative, deviatory, devious, dialectic, diffuse, digressing, digressive, divagatory, drifting, enthymematic, epagogic, episodic, errant, erratic, excursive, flitting, floating, footloose, footloose and fancy-free, fugitive, gadding, gypsyish, gypsy-like, helical, hypothetical, ideational, indirect, inductive, inferential, intellectual, intelligent, knowing, labyrinthine, landloping, long-winded, loose, maieutic, maundering, mazy, meandering, migrational, migratory, noetic, nomad, nomadic, not so dumb, oblique, orbital, O-shaped, out-of-the-way, planetary, prolix, rambling, ranging, rational, reasonable, roaming, rotary, round, roundabout, roving, sane, sensible, serpentine, shifting, snaky, sophic, soritical, spiral, straggling, stray, straying, strolling, strong-minded, swerving, syllogistic, synthetic, traipsing, transient, transitory, transmigratory, turning, twisting, understanding, undirected, vagabond, vagrant, veering, verbose, wandering, winding, windy, wordy, zigzag |
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