Discursive \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.
[1913 Webster]
The power he [Shakespeare] delights to show is not
intense, but discursive. --Hazlitt.
[1913 Webster]
A man rather tacit than discursive. --Carlyle.
[1913 Webster]
2. Reasoning; proceeding from one ground to another, as in
reasoning; argumentative.
[1913 Webster]
Reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive. --Milton.
--
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
discursive
adj 1: proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather than
intuition [syn: dianoetic]
2: (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" [syn: digressive, excursive, rambling]
WordNet (r) 2.0
117 Moby Thesaurus words for "discursive":
O-shaped, 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, gypsy-like,
gypsyish, 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, 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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
dianoetic, digressive, excursive, rambling
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