What does "excursus" mean?

A fuller treatment (in a separate section) of a particular part of the text of a book, especially a classic.

What is a synonym for "excursus"?

Common synonyms include: aberration, apercu, article, aside, bend, bias.

//ɛkˈskɝsəs// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
A fuller treatment (in a separate section) of a particular part of the text of a book, especially a classic.
2
a message that departs from the main subject wordnet
3
A narrative digression, especially to discuss a particular issue.
"Here is what us scholars call an excursus. If you are an honest man the following page or two can be of no possible interest to you."

"Here is what us scholars call an excursus. If you are an honest man the following page or two can be of no possible interest to you."

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

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.