Word of the Day

Sunday November 29, 2009

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discursive [dis-KUR-siv]

adjective

1. Passing from one thing to another; ranging over a wide field; roving; digressive.
2. Proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather than intuition.

• Charles Lamb is among the greatest essayists: surely among the portraits in any pundit's private gallery of useful reminders. He was and should still be celebrated for the subversive sublimity of his prose, which reconciles seemingly contrary qualities of smoothness and edge, the discursive and the pointed, the innocent and the astute, in a droll music that fills your head without the slightest concession to jingle.
  David Warren, "The wisdom of crowds", The Ottawa Citizen, Oct 17, 2009
• This time Mr. Dexter has spun a discursive cradle-to-grave yarn about a well-meaning but wayward soul and his saintly stepfather.
  Eric Konigsberg, "Write What You Know: Reflections of a Wayward Soul", New York Times, Oct 14, 2009
• Secondly, that in these household stories (the models for which were originally oral tradition) the thing most to be avoided is a discursive or descriptive style of writing. Brevity and epigram must ever be soul of their wit, and they should be written as tales that are told.
  Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing (1841 - 1885) An English writer of children's stories. Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales (1917)

Origin of the Word

Discursive, approximately 1599, derives from Middle French discursif, from Latin discursus "a running about."