discursively

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adverb

In a discursive manner.

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Meanings

adverbdiscursively (comparative more discursively, superlative most discursively)

comparative more discursively · superlative most discursively

  1. In a discursive manner.

    We are dealing in the Iliad with a commanding vision of man, articulate in every detail, not with a tale of adventure automatically or discursively carried forward.

    1962, George Steiner, “Homer and the Scholars”, in Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman, New York: Atheneum, published 1986, page 176
    3 more examples

    If then I seem to step somewhat too discursively from point to point of my topic, let me suggest that I do so in the hope of thus the better keeping unbroken that chain of graduated impression by which alone the intellect of Man can expect to encompass the grandeurs of which I speak, and, in their majestic totality, to comprehend them.

    1848 March, Edgar A[llan] Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem, New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] P[almer] Putnam, of late firm of “Wiley & Putnam,” […], →OCLC, page 103

    There were certain things […] that pricked him to talk discursively and incautiously; but now he realized that he had only been talking like a character in a novel, and not a very good novel.

    1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VIII, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC

    In that realm, which was discursively constructed and called the Orient, certain kinds of assertions could be made, all of them possessing the same powerful generality and cultural validity.

    1978, Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, published 2003, Chapter 2, part II, p. 148

Synonyms & antonyms

adverbin a rambling manner

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Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

discursively. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/discursively

MLA

“discursively.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/discursively. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “discursively,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/discursively.

Source: discursively on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.