divagation

Noun of action form, from verb divagate (from the Latin verb divagare) + noun of action suffix -ion (from the Latin suffix -io).

divagation (countable and uncountable, plural divagations)

1. Straying off from a course or way.
   • 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima

     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 […]

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

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

2. (medicine) Incoherent or wandering speech and thought.

• vaginatoid

divaguer +‎ -ation

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divagation f (plural divagations)

1. divagation
2. wandering, rambling
3. raving