excursive

comparative more excursive · superlative most excursive

1. Tending to digress.

   Or evening, in her starry mantle bright, Precedes the slow majestic train of night; In that still hour the mind excursive roves, A heavenly voice the listening spirit moves.

   1815, Lydia Sigourney, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse, Contemplation, page 3

   2 more examples

   Now all his ponderings, however excursive, wheeled round Isabel as their center; and back to her they came again from every excursion; and again derived some new, small germs for wonderment.

   1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities

   By such means he flattered himself that in time he should subvert her fine understanding, and, by the contamination of her hitherto unsullied mind, reduce her to a level with himself,—and this he meditated to effect by slow and gradual operations, through the medium of her imagination, which he had discovered to be warm and excursive;[…]

   1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter V, in Duty and Inclination: […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 61

2. Tending to go out.

   Then into the quiet room came Susan Nipper and the candles; shortly afterwards, the tea, the Captain, and the excursive Mr Toots, who, as above mentioned, was frequently on the move afterwards, and passed but a restless evening.

   1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC