Definition of "divagation" [di•va•ga•tion]

• Straying off from a course or way (noun)

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• "I had never heard of 'divagation' until a couple of days ago, when I came across it in Alan Bennett's 'The Uncommon Reader' (part of the Trappist's holiday reading material)."
• "Earlier in this story Peter Wilkinson stepped briefly out of the narrative stream to note an uncanny coincidence converging on the word "divagation," an infrequently used but perfectly legitimate element of the English language."
• "So this divagation is a way to find an entrance, indeed an estuary of sorts, into the story of an extra-ordinary artist, to the course of whose life I had but intermittent access before his death, though the sunken parts of which will, I am sure, be reclaimed by others who knew him and in whom too was borne an equal fascination."