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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Covering a wide field of subjects; rambling.
  2. adj. Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Relating to the understanding, or the active facility of knowing or of forming conclusions; ratiocinative: opposed to intuitive.
  2. Passing rapidly from one subject to another; desultory; rambling; digressional.
  3. Passing over an object, as in running the eye over the parts of a large object of vision.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Tending to digress from the main point; rambling.
  2. adj. Using reason and argument rather than intuition.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Passing from one thing to another; ranging over a wide field; roving; digressive; desultory.
  2. adj. Reasoning; proceeding from one ground to another, as in reasoning; argumentative.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather than intuition
  2. adj. (of e.g. speech and writing) tending to depart from the main point or cover a wide range of subjects

Etymologies

  1. Medieval Latin discursīvus, from Latin discursus, running about; see discourse.

Examples

  • “It could be on any subject they chose, and the only requirement was that the essay had to be discursive, that is to say, they had to formulate a thesis, develop an argument, defend it, and draw a conclusion," he writes in "Crisis on Campus," a manifesto for overhauling higher education.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Reading, Writing, Radical Change

  • “It was hence possible to con - ceive a comprehensive doctrinal learning such that, by its means, man reasons and discusses in the three arts called discursive (sermocinales), but at the same time endeavors to learn about things through the other four arts called real (reales).”

    WORK

  • “Secondly, knowledge may be called discursive or collative in use; as at times those who know, reason from cause to effect, not in order to learn anew, but wishing to use the knowledge they have.”

    Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) From the Complete American Edition

  • “So it seems the adjective the NYT should have used was not "discursive" but "prevaricative".”

    In anticipation of Friday's debate, the NYT sizes up Obama and McCain.

  • “Drawing on Ian Hacking's work, Haslanger has referred to this as "discursive" construction:”

    Feminist Metaphysics

  • “On the contrary, Jacobi had been forced to use the term, and to oppose it to reason, only because the philosophers had pre-empted the latter term, and had unduly restricted it to mean the kind of discursive conceptualization that abstracts from real things and is ultimately irrelevant to judgments of existence.”

    Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

  • “He had this kind of discursive education, but no discipline; and when he went to college, he was at the mercy of any who courted his affection, intoxicated his imagination, and then led him into vice.”

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 43, May, 1861 Creator

  • “I mildly call the discussion "discursive," though it would be fair in one or two instances to dub the piece frankly a medley.”

    Platform Monologues

  • “Michaelmas, and the New Year, and there hold a kind of discursive symposium on such themes as then and there present themselves.”

    Platform Monologues

  • “There's no room for that kind of discursive, descriptive run-on on the Web, where”

    NYT > Home Page

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  • mkb That there is a damn fine word. May 29, 2008

‘discursive’ has been looked up 5754 times, loved by 14 people, added to 69 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 16.