divagation

plural divagations

1. countableuncountableStraying off from a course or way.

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

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

   1 more example

   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 […]

   1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.

2. countableuncountablemedicineIncoherent or wandering speech and thought.