discursive

3 definitions found

discursive - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  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]

discursive - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  discursive
      adj 1: proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather
             than intuition [syn: dianoetic, discursive]
      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, discursive, excursive, rambling]

discursive - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  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