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digress

verb

di·gressdī-ˈgres How to pronounce digress (audio)

də-

digressed;digressing;digresses

Synonyms ofdigress next

intransitive verb

:to turn aside especially from the main subject of attention or course ofargument

Did you know?

But IDigress

The verbdigress is often encountered in the phrase “but I digress.” This is anidiomatic expression that has been in use in English for many hundreds of years. Examples may be found as far back as 1653, when Edmund Hall used “but I digress” in hisA Scriptural Discourse of the Apostasie and the Antichrist. The phrase is used, oftenjocularly, by speakers and writers to indicate that they have veered away from the subject that they had been speaking or writing of, and intend to return to it.

Choose the Right Synonym fordigress

swerve,veer,deviate,depart,digress,diverge mean to turn aside from a straight course.

swerve may suggest a physical, mental, or moral turning away from a given course, often with abruptness.

swerved to avoid hitting the dog

veer implies a major change in direction.

at that point the pathveers to the right

deviate implies a turning from a customary or prescribed course.

neverdeviated from her daily routine

depart suggests a deviation from a traditional or conventional course or type.

occasionallydeparts from his own guidelines

digress applies to a departing from the subject of one's discourse.

a professor prone todigress

diverge may equaldepart but usually suggests a branching of a main path into two or more leading in different directions.

after school their pathsdiverged

Examples ofdigress in a Sentence

The third visit, the first one after I started the drugs, is shorter, more perfunctory than the first two. Papakostas moves briskly from one question to the next and looks at his watch if wedigress.—

Gary Greenberg,Harper's,May 2007

Coleridge, of course, who happily called himself a … lover of parentheses, does not bridle himself, but merely produces digressions about how he should notdigress.—

James Wood,New Republic,6 Sept. 1999

He had not written too much per se; he haddigressed intolerably given the significance of the events under consideration.—

Alain de Botton,How Proust Can Change Your Life,1997

Hedigressed so often that it was hard to follow what he was saying. If I candigress for a moment, I'd like to briefly mention her earlier films.

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage.Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.Send us feedback.

This very reason candigressthe correlation between security initiatives and reducing the likelihood of breaches.—

Siranjeevi Dheenadhayalan,Forbes.com, 28 Apr. 2025The islanders can no more control whether the whales come or go than Ella can control her cancer or Mayor Annie can corral a group of quibbling,digressing neighbors into decisive action.—

Sara Holdren,Vulture, 6 Mar. 2025Mahler handled this melodrama with remarkable composure; apparently, the two mendigressed into a discussion of the brokenness of modern art.—

Alex Ross,The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025The operative word is slightly; don’tdigress into the weeds.—

Jerry Weissman,Forbes, 16 Dec. 2024The islanders can no more control whether the whales come or go than Ella can control her cancer or Mayor Annie can corral a group of quibbling,digressingneighbors into decisive action.—

Sara Holdren,Vulture, 6 Mar. 2025Short chapters often begin in the present and thendigressinto episodes from the narrator’s mostly stable, untroubled past.—

Lauren Christensen,New York Times, 10 Feb. 2025Mahler handled this melodrama with remarkable composure; apparently, the two mendigressedinto a discussion of the brokenness of modern art.—

Alex Ross,The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025The operative word is slightly; don’tdigressinto the weeds.—

Jerry Weissman,Forbes, 16 Dec. 2024