Discursive

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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.
        -- {Dis*cur"sive*ly}, adv. -- {Dis*cur"sive*ness}, n.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  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}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  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