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ing from one thing to another; ranging over a wide field; roving; digressive; desultory. "Discursive notices." De Quincey. The power he [Shakespeare] delights to show is not intense, but discursive. Hazlitt. A man rather tacit than discursive. Carlyle.

Having a tendency to gather together, or to make collections. Taylor is eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative. Coleridge.

which teaches the rules and modes of reasoning; the application of logical principles to discursive reasoning; the science or art of discriminating truth from error; logical discussion.

Pertaining to the discursive faculty, its acts or products. I would employ . . . dianoetic to denote the operation of the discursive, elaborative, or comparative faculty. Sir W. Hamilton.

Reasoning; characterized by reasoning; passing from premises to consequences; discursive. Milton.

Argumentative; discursive; reasoning. [R.] Bp. Hall.

Argumentation; ratiocination; discursive reasoning.

l power of discerning relations and of viewing objects by means of, or in, relations; the discursive faculty; thought.

without deduction or reasoning. Whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive, or intuitive. Milton.

To talk or write in a discursive, aimless way.

Roving; wandering; discursive; as, a rambling fellow, talk, or building.

nt or space taken in by anything excursive; compass or extent of excursion; reach; scope; discursive; as, the range of one's voice, or authority. Far as creation's ample range extends. Pope. The range and compass of Hammond's knowledge filled the whole circle of the arts. Bp. Fell. A man has not enough range of thought…

the faculty of first truths, as distinguished from the understanding, which is called the discursive or ratiocinative faculty. We have no other faculties of perceiving or knowing anything divine or human, but by our five senses and our reason. P. Browne. In common and popular discourse, reason denotes that power by whi…

among the sequacious thinkers of the day. Sir W. Hamilton. Milton was not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was; for the motions of his mind were slow, solemn, and sequacious, like those of the planets. De Quincey.

Specifically, the discursive faculty; the faculty of knowing by the medium or use of general conceptions or relations. In this sense it is contrasted with, and distinguished from, the reason. I use the term understanding, not for the noetic faculty, intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoetic or dis…