From Latin 'digredi' (to step aside) — 'di-' (apart) + 'gradi' (to step). A verbal detour before returning to the topic.
To leave the main subject temporarily in speech or writing; to wander from the topic.
From Latin 'digressus,' past participle of 'dīgredī' (to go away, to depart from a course, to deviate from the main path), from 'dī-' (apart, away — a reduced form of 'dis-') + 'gradī' (to walk, to step, to advance), from PIE *ghredh- (to walk, to go). To digress is to 'step aside' — to leave the main path of argument or narrative and walk off on a tangent, before (if the speaker is skilled) finding the way back. The word entered English in the 16th century as a rhetorical term: the 'digressio' was a recognised figure of classical oratory, a deliberate departure from the argument that
The phrase 'but I digress' has become a literary and conversational formula — a self-aware signal that the speaker recognizes they have wandered off topic and intends to return. Laurence Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy' (1759-1767) elevated digression to an art form: the novel consists almost entirely of digressions from digressions, with the narrator rarely reaching the story he set out to tell. Sterne wrote: 'Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; — they are the life, the