divagation

Nominalization of divagate (from the Latin verb divagare) + -ion (from the Latin suffix -io).

divagation (countable and uncountable, plural divagations)

1. Straying off from a course or way.
   • 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.:

     It was after the complete revelation that he understood the romantic innuendoes with which his childhood had been surrounded, and of which he had never caught the meaning; they having seemed but part and parcel of the habitual and promiscuous divagations of his too constructive companion. When it came over him that, for years, she had made a fool of him, to himself and to others, he could have beaten her, for grief and shame […]

   • 1905, Francis Lynde, A Fool for Love, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, page 52:

     But this was a divagation, and he pulled himself back to the askings of the moment

2. (medicine) Incoherent or wandering speech and thought.

• divagate

• vaginatoid

From divaguer +‎ -ation.

• IPA^(key): /di.va.ɡa.sjɔ̃/

• Audio:

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divagation f (plural divagations)

1. divagation
2. wandering, rambling
3. raving

• “divagation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.