Word.ws English Dictionary

discursively

discursively adverb: in a discursive manner.

Adverb

discursively (comparative more discursively, superlative most discursively)

  1. In a discursive manner.
    • 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...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

Examples of discursively in a sentence

  • 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...
  • 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:

Forms of discursively

comparativemore discursively
superlativemost discursively

Origin of discursively

From discursive + -ly.

Questions about discursively

What does discursively mean?
Discursively means in a discursive manner.
How do you use discursively in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is discursively?
Discursively is an adverb.

Words near discursively in the dictionary

  1. discursion
  2. discursions
  3. discursist
  4. discursists
  5. discursive
  6. discursively
  7. discursiveness
  8. discursivise
  9. discursivised
  10. discursivities
  11. discursivity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: discursively (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.

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