discursive
/dɪsˈkɜː(ɹ)sɪv/
discursive adjective: tending to digress from the main point.
Adjective
discursive (comparative more discursive, superlative most discursive)
- Tending to digress from the main point.
- This period had long since passed; the discursive reading, the enlightened discourse of her grandfather, had cast her mind in a different mould to the usual superstition of her country; but faith and love were only more pure and perfect in a soul too innocent not to be religious.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 185
- This means, at times, long and perhaps overly discursive discussions of other taxa.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page viii
- Synonyms:
- digressive, rambling, discoursive
- Using reason and argument rather than intuition.
- Synonyms:
- discoursive
discursive meaning in Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
discursive in Bengali
- অপ্রাসঙ্গিক, এলোমেলো
discursive in Malayalam
- digressive, rambling, meandering
- ശാഖാചംക്രമണം ചെയ്യന്ന, അടുക്കും ക്രമവുമില്ലാത്ത, വിഷയം വിട്ടു സവിസ്തരം സംസാരിക്കുന്ന, ചുറ്റിത്തിരിയുന്ന, വിഷയത്തിൽനിന്നു വ്യതിചലിച്ച, അലഞ്ഞുതിരിയുന്ന
- fluent, flowing, fluid
- വാചാലമായ, വാഗെെ്വഭവത്തോടുകൂടിയ, വാക്പാടവമുള്ള, സവിസ്തരമായ, അനർഗ്ഗള, പ്രപഞ്ചക
discursive in Kannada
- ಸುತ್ತಾಡುವ, ಓರಣ ತಪ್ಪಿದ
Examples of discursive in a sentence
- Democratic codes are the underlying discursive structure of democratic readings and evaluations of the world.
- This is what happens when speakers with more discursive power uptalk to hearers with less discursive power.
- Within Bloomfieldian antimentalism, the recognition of discursive structures as rule-governed entails interpretation.
Synonyms of discursive
Forms of discursive
| comparative | more discursive |
|---|---|
| superlative | most discursive |
Origin of discursive
Borrowed from Middle French discursif, formed from the stem of Latin discursus and the suffix -if, and in part borrowed from Medieval Latin discursivus. By surface analysis, discourse + -ive.
Words formed from discursive
Words that rhyme with discursive
- recursive
- cursive
- immersive
- adversive
- animadversive
- aversive
- conversive
- dispersive
- excursive
- introversive
- semicursive
- subversive
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- abstersive
- antidiscursive
- antisubversive
- aspersive
- co-recursive
- compersive
- contraversive
- corecursive
- counterdiscursive
- countersubversive
- cyberdiscursive
- detersive
- electrodispersive
- eversive
- extroversive
- immunosubversive
- incursive
- interconversive
- interdiscursive
- inversive
- ipsiversive
- left-recursive
- macrodiscursive
- metadiscursive
- microdiscursive
- monodispersive
- nonaversive
- noncursive
- nondiscursive
- nondispersive
- nonimmersive
- nonrecursive
- nonsubversive
- overdispersive
- perversive
- photoaversive
- polydispersive
- precursive
- primitive recursive
- proaversive
- procursive
- pursive
- reversive
- Roman cursive
- semiodiscoursive
- submersive
- subrecursive
- superrecursive
Questions about discursive
- What does discursive mean?
- Discursive means tending to digress from the main point.
- What is discursive in Bengali?
- Discursive in Bengali is অপ্রাসঙ্গিক, এলোমেলো. See Discursive meaning in Bengali.
- What part of speech is discursive?
- Discursive is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce discursive?
- Discursive is pronounced /dɪsˈkɜː(ɹ)sɪv/ (UK).
Words near discursive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: discursive (page history and authors); Discursive (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); discursive (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); discursive (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
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Cite this entry: “discursive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/discursive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.