Tangential Speech is a phenomenon in which a person constantly digresses to random, irrelevant ideas and topics.
When someone has Tangential Speech the person might start telling a story but loads the story down with so much irrelevant detail that they never get to the point or the conclusion.
Tangential speech is verbal communication that repeatedly diverges from the original subject.
Resulting from disorganized thought processes or a diminished ability to focus attention, these digressions may continue until the original subject is no longer the focus of the conversation.
Some examples of tangential speech are.
"I really got mad as I was waiting in line at the grocery store.
I cannot stand lines. Waiting and waiting. I waited for a long time to get my driver's license.
Tangentiality is the tendency to speak about topics unrelated to the main topic of discussion.
While most people engage in tangentiality from time to time, constant and extreme tangentiality may indicate an underlying mental health condition, particularly schizophrenia.
Everyone goes off on tangents sometimes.
Tangentiality refers to a disturbance in the thought process that causes the individual to relate excessive or irrelevant detail that never reaches the essential point of a conversation or the desired answer to a question.
To go off on a tangent means to start talking about something that is only slightly or indirectly related to the original subject She went off on a tangent about what happened to her last summer.
Tangent means, in L@tin, touching. Remember "Noli me tangere"?
Most people encounter it in high school geometry, where two lines touch, but don't cross.
Thus, going of on a tangent means going off on a line that touches the original one, but takes a different course.