excursus

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

Learned borrowing from Latin excursus (“excursion”). Doublet of excurse.

This started an ethnological excursus on swineherds, and drew from Pinecoffin long tables showing the proportion per thousand of the caste in the Derajat. — The Works of Rudyard Kipling: One Volume Edition, Rudyard Kipling
The translation under consideration is entitled "Priapeia, or the Sportive Epigrams of divers Poets on Priapus: the Latin text now for the first time Englished in verse and prose (the metrical version by Outidanos) [Good for Nothing], with Introduction, Notes, Explanatory and Illustrative and Excursus, by Neaniskos [a young man]," whose name, we need hardly say, is no secret. — The Life of Sir Richard Burton, Thomas Wright
Mr. Casaubon’s mind was more alert, and he seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication, saying, “That will do—mark that”—or “Pass on to the next head—I omit the second excursus on Crete.” Dorothea was amazed to think of the bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it had been creeping for years. — Middlemarch, George Eliot

digression, aside, divagation, parenthesis

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